On The 50^th 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/