Dock of the Bay on guitar

Dock of the bay lead sheet

“(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” is a song co-written by soul singer Otis Redding and guitarist Steve Cropper. It was recorded by Redding twice in 1967, including once just three days before his death in a plane crash on December 10, 1967. The song was released on Stax Records’ Volt label in 1968, becoming the first ever posthumous single to top the charts in the US. It reached number 3 on the UK Singles Chart.

Redding started writing the lyrics to the song in August 1967, while sitting on a rented houseboat in Sausalito, California. He completed the song in Memphis with the help of Cropper, who was a Stax producer and the guitarist for Booker T. & the M.G.’s. The song features whistling and sounds of waves crashing on a shore.

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that what is deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” -E. E. Cummings

Cooler Full of Nutcrackers I’ve been writing music and songs for years; here’s a compilation of a few of them. Hope you enjoy my sonic art! Some of the finger-style pieces are decades old while the music that sounds like a piano is more recent. That music was created in Musescore, a notation/teaching/song-writing tool I was introduced to while at Berklee online.  Well worth the time it might cost to investigate it, imho. musescore.org