“For your precious love” – Otis Redding

Otis Redding

This evocative love song actually wasn’t written by Redding, but by Arthur & Richard Brooks and Jerry Butler, and performed publicly by ‘The Impressions’ in 1958. Yet Otis Redding’s wavering, sincere voice falls softly on the simple guitar of his cover so wistfully that you can’t help but keep replaying it. I’m up to my 5th play right now. Redding’s open-throated rhythm & blues style resonates in his other tracks, like from his 1954 album ‘Pain in my Heart’, “These arms of mine”. Anyone who’s seen director Jaco Van Dormael’s brilliantly unique film “Mr Nobody” knows exactly where I found ‘For your precious love’. The pool scene? Yeah, that scene. Otis usually incorporates his life into lyrics, such as in “Sitting on the dock of the bay” with “I left my home in Georgia, headed for the Frisco Bay” which he co-wrote with writing partner Steve Cropper. Since being a child constantly moving around America, singing was an obvious way for Redding to bring entertainment into his life. Apparently a local musician Gladys Williams held a talent show in Georgia, which Redding won 15 times straight before being disallowed from performing again. Cropper stated in a 1990 interview on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’ that Redding always “had 100 ideas”, reflecting the switched on nature of man who marked such an impression on the soul/R&B scene in the 1950′s & 60′s. Though unfortunately, yet almost habitually of globally spot-lighted performers, Redding was killed early at age 26 after his plane crashed in Lake Monona, Wisconsin. The haunting photograph of his carcass being hauled out of the water onto a boat is haunting, especially whilst listening to the now terribly ironic ‘Sitting on the dock of the bay’.