The title read like a dare: Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul. When Otis Redding's fifth studio album arrived on 15 October 1966, the singer was already the most explosive voice in Memphis soul, but this record asked a bigger question. Could one man define an entire genre in thirty-six minutes? Redding answered by splitting the album down the middle: one side of other people's songs, one side of his own.
Covers on one side, originals on the other
The first side leaned on covers, and that was the risk. A soul singer taking on a Beatles tune or a country waltz could sound like a novelty act. Instead, Redding treated each borrowed song as raw material. The second side flipped the script, built mostly from songs Redding wrote himself. That structure made the album a kind of argument: interpretation on one half, authorship on the other, both held together by the same horn-heavy Memphis sound.
The house band gave the record its muscle. Booker T. & the M.G.'s supplied the engine: organist Booker T. Jones, guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn and drummer Al Jackson Jr. Behind them sat pianist Isaac Hayes and the Memphis Horns. That lineup could shift from a whisper to a shout in four bars, and Redding rode every change like a man leaning into a curve.
A quiz-show melody becomes a single
The album's first single came from a strange place. "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)" grew out of the theme from the TV quiz show The $64,000 Question. Redding and Steve Cropper wrote the song together, and the title came from Redding's own habit of humming horn parts. The single climbed to number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached number 12 on the R&B chart, proof that a quiz-show melody could be rebuilt into something bruised and personal.
The second single was even bolder. "Try a Little Tenderness" had been written by Jimmy Campbell, Reg Connelly and Harry M. Woods back in the early 1930s. By 1966 it was a dusty standard, the kind of song a younger singer might avoid. Redding grabbed it. Isaac Hayes wrote the arrangement, opening the track with a three-part contrapuntal horn line inspired by the strings on Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come".
Hayes builds the arrangement to a climax
Hayes kept building the arrangement until the song exploded. Near the climax, a cymbal crash lands like a door slamming open, a fill Hayes would later reuse in his own "Theme from Shaft". The single reached number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 4 on the R&B chart. A song older than Redding himself suddenly sounded like the most urgent thing on the radio.
A song older than Redding himself suddenly sounded like the most urgent thing on the radio.
The album's commercial life was solid but not spectacular. It peaked at number 73 on the Billboard 200, while on the R&B LP chart it climbed to number 5. The real story was what critics heard. Jon Landau called the record the best ever made in Memphis and the finest example of modern soul he had ever encountered. That kind of praise mattered more than chart positions, because it framed the album as a benchmark rather than a hit.
Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul turned out to be the last solo studio album Otis Redding released in his lifetime. That fact gives every horn stab and every shouted syllable a heavier weight. He never got to see how far the dictionary would reach, but the album stands as the clearest statement of what Memphis soul could do when a singer, a band and an arranger all aimed at the same target.