Embarrassingly enough, I got my first introduction to Otis Redding through John Hughes' Pretty In Pink. I suppose there's worse ways to find out about artists than through John Hughes movie soundtracks, because after all he's the man who ensured that the Smiths would get royalty-payments for years to come after turning their 'Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want' into a teen movie-soundtrack classic.
Anyways, so alongside Barry Manilow's 'Copacabana', there's Otis performing 'Try A Little Tenderness' at Monterey. I'd always been apprehensive of listening to soul, as if might suddenly come off as some kind of wannabe; like I would be just as bad as those boys at the busstop talking in odd accents with their pants halfway down their knees. I have to admit, the thing about soul music is that I always felt sort of alienated by the religious aspect of a lot of variations of soul (especially Southern soul, or deep soul).
I'm far from religious, but I've always been jealous of this sense of belonging some believers seem to have, and when Otis sings, he sounds positively posessed; by God, the Devil, his own enthusiam or sadness or love for the girl he's singing about, I'm not sure. There's few singers who throw so much of themselves into the songs they're singing, and a lot of the time when Otis sings, you half-expect him to fall to the floor at the end of the song.