Otis Ray Redding Jr. born September 9, 1941 was a singer and composer from the United States. He is a seminal musician in soul music and rhythm and blues, as well as a renowned singer in the history of American popular music.
Redding was born the fourth of six children and the first son of Otis Redding Sr. and Fannie Roseman in Dawson, Georgia. Redding Sr. was a sharecropper before working at Robins Air Force Base in Macon and preaching in local churches.
The family relocated to Tindall Heights, a primarily African-American public housing project in Macon, when Redding was three years old. He began singing in the Vineville Baptist Church choir and learning guitar and piano at a young age.
Redding began taking drum and singing classes at the age of ten. He sang in the school band at Ballard-Hudson High School. Every Sunday, he earned $6 by singing gospel songs for Macon radio station WIBB, and he won $5 in a teen talent event for 15 weeks in a row.
What was the cause of Otis Redding death?
By 1967, the band was flying to shows in Redding’s Beechcraft H18 plane. On December 9, they appeared on the Cleveland-based Upbeat television show. They performed three gigs in two nights at Leo’s Casino.
Next a phone chat with his wife and children, Redding’s next stop was Madison, Wisconsin, where they were scheduled to perform the following day, Sunday, December 10, at the Factory nightclub near the University of Wisconsin.
Despite the bad weather, which included heavy rain and fog, and despite warnings, the jet took off. Pilot Richard Fraser radioed for permission to land four miles (6.5 kilometers) from their destination at Truax Field in Madison. Following that, the jet crashed into Lake Monona.
Ben Cauley, a member of the Bar-Kays, was sleeping soon before the accident and was the only survivor. He awoke seconds before impact to see bandmate Phalon Jones exclaim, “Oh, no!” through a window.
Cauley stated that the last thing he remembered doing before the accident was unbuckling his seat belt. He then found himself in freezing water, clutching a seat cushion to keep himself afloat.
He couldn’t save the others because he couldn’t swim. The crash’s cause was never determined.
In addition to Redding, four members of the Bar-Kays—guitarist Jimmy King, tenor saxophonist Phalon Jones, organist Ronnie Caldwell, and drummer Carl Cunningham; their valet, Matthew Kelly; and the pilot Fraser—died in the crash.
