I really feel like I'm cheating on the whole premise of this blog by buying things I already know are great, especially records that came out nearly forty years ago and have already had buckets of ink spilled for the cause of extolling their greatness.So by buying The Dock of the Bay, I expected to be buying what would be come the best soul album in my collection, and that's pretty much what happened. I'm so predictable. I excited that by owning this, I'm finally able to purge from my memory Percy Sledge's nasal, geriatric rendition of the sort-of title track he performed when I saw him a year or so ago.
It's easy to immediately latch onto Redding's vocals and let them carry you through the record, but I'm really getting a kick out of listening to the instrumentation. Otis (or Steve Cropper) really pulled together an A-list, including Booker T, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Isaac Hayes, and a general smattering of the greatest studio musicians of the era.
Cropper's production here is excellent - the sound is completely open while still remaining precise, allowing things like the stellar interplay between the guitar and horns on "Don't Mess With Cupid" to sound as great as they do, all while backing up one of the most incendiary voices of the decade.
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