* AccidentallyCorrectWriting: His version of [[Music/TheRollingStonesBand "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"]] featured the EpicRiff played on horns to translate the song into {{soul}}. It turns out that Keith Richards wanted to have horns playing the riff on the original and meant the guitar to just be a placeholder, until the Stones decided it worked just fine on guitar.
* ApprovalOfGod: After Music/ArethaFranklin's version of "Respect" hit #1, Redding still played his own arrangement of the song live rather than borrow hers, but he added her "R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me..." bit to it.
* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: "Pain In My Heart" turned out to be so similar to Music/AllenToussaint's "Ruler Of My Heart" that the latter successfully sued for copyright infringement.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** He died just before his music broke into the mainstream, at what is now regarded as a possible career turning point hinted at by "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay". There is also evidence to suggest that "Dock of the Bay" was intended to be part of a ''[[Music/TheBeatles Sgt. Pepper]]''-style ConceptAlbum (he'd been a big fan of the Beatles album and was reportedly writing a bunch of new material for a possible album up until the day he died).
** Right before Redding's death he approached Creator/AtlanticRecords chief Jerry Wexler about producing him in the future, an idea Wexler was open to but was wary to try because of his thorny relationship with Stax's Jim Stewart.[[labelnote:Explanation]]Atlantic distributed Stax's material, but Stewart had cut off a lot of their ties with Atlantic while harboring ambitions of Stax becoming a Creator/{{Motown}}-like major label, and he likely would've viewed Wexler producing Redding as a first step toward Atlantic trying to entice Redding away from Stax, where he was the flagship artist.[[/labelnote]] Otis likely had in mind Wexler using the same approach on him that he'd used to revive Music/ArethaFranklin's career: record in New York with an AllStarCast of southern Soul musicians, using GospelMusic as an inspiration.
** Related to Redding's plane crash, both Steve Cropper and Stax session bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn were also supposed to be on that very flight, but they changed plans at the last minute.
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