On The 50th
Anniversary Of The Death Of Singer From The Soul Otis Redding
By Josh Breslin
The beauty of art, music,
you know cultural artifacts is that they can last, outlast their creators. The
beauty of art, music you know cultural artifacts in the modern age is that you
can access almost anything via some site on the Internet. What you cannot do is
get a sense of certain personalities, certain singers in this case that you had
seen in person once that have passed on. That was the case with the singer from
the soul Otis Redding who passed away fifty years ago this year. (Hell, even I
can’t believe it has been that long). Saw Otis in his prime, saw Otis with my then
flame, a gal we all called Butterfly Swirl (real name Carol Callahan) a surfer
girl from Carlsbad out on the Pacific Coast Highway just then slumming, thank god,
with “hippies” on Captain Crunch’s yellow brick road bus tooling up and down
the Pacific Coast at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Was there at the
creation of the short sweet legend of Otis. Enough said
Link to a Christopher
Lydon Open Source NPR program on the life
and times of Otis Redding for an audience 50 years later.
radioopensource.org/afterlife-otis-redding/
