(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay

Otis Redding began writing "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" in August 1967, while staying on a rented houseboat in Sausalito, California. He had been inundated with fans at his San Francisco hotel during a tour with the Bar-Kays, and concert impresario Bill Graham offered him the houseboat at Waldo Point Harbor as a respite. There Redding listened obsessively to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and considered developing a new sound for himself. He wrote the opening lines and first verse under the abbreviated title "Dock of the Bay," then kept adding lines on napkins and hotel paper while touring in support of King & Queen and Live in Europe.

That November, Redding joined guitarist Steve Cropper at the Stax recording studio in Memphis, where the two completed the song. Cropper later said Redding had little more than the image of ships coming into the bay, and that he finished the lyrics himself, writing about Redding's own life. The song was recorded on November 22, with overdubs on December 7, and its style differed from most of Redding's recordings; he told his wife he wanted it to be a little different. He considered it unfinished and planned a final version.

Redding died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967, three days after the overdubs. Cropper mixed the track at Stax Studios afterward, adding the seagulls and crashing waves Redding had requested. The song featured whistling, though who performed it remains unclear. Released on Volt in 1968, it became the first posthumous number 1 single in the US and reached number 3 in the UK.