Redding was born in the small town of Dawson, Georgia. At the age of 5 he moved with his family to Macon, Georgia. He sang in the choir of the Vineville Baptist Church, and became somewhat of a local celebrity as a teenager after winning a local Sunday night talent show 15 weeks in a row. In 1960, In 1962, he made his first real mark in the musicRedding began touring the South with Johnny Jenkins and The Pinetoppers. That same year he made his first recordings, "She's All Right" and "Shout Bamalama" with this group under the name "Otis and The Shooters". business during a Johnny Jenkins session when he recorded "These Arms of Mine", a ballad that Redding had written. The song became a minor hit on Volt Records, a subsidiary of renowned "Southern soul" label Stax, based in Memphis, Tennessee. His manager was fellow Maconite Phil Walden (who later founded Capricorn Records). Otis Redding continued to release for Stax/Volt, and built his fanbase by extensively touring a legendarily electrifying live show with support from fellow Stax artists Sam & Dave. Further hits between 1964 and 1966 included "Mr. Pitiful", "I Can't Turn You Loose" (to become The Blues Brothers entrance theme music), "Try a Little Tenderness" "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (written by the Rolling Stones), and "Respect" (later a smash hit for Aretha Franklin). Redding wrote many of his own songs, which was unusual for the time, often with Steve Cropper  Redding and six others, including four of the six members of Redding's backup band, The Bar-Kays, were killed when the plane on which they were travelling crashed into Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin on December 10, 1967. The two remaining members of The Bar-Kays were Ben Cauley and James Alexander. Cauley was the only person aboard Redding's plane to survive the crash; Alexander was on another plane. Cauley reported that he had been asleep until just seconds before impact, and recalled that upon waking he saw bandmate Phalon Jones look out a window and say, "Oh, no!" Cauley said that he then unbuckled his seat belt, and that was his final recollection before finding himself in the frigid waters of the lake, grasping a seat cushion to keep himself afloat. Redding's body was recovered the next day when the lake bed was dragged with a grappling hook, and footage exists of his body being brought out of the water. The cause of the crash was never precisely determined. Redding was 26 years old at the time of his death. He was laid to rest in a tomb on his private ranch in Round Oak, Georgia, 23 miles (37 km) north of Macon.

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