Throughout the seven full sets captured on Live at the Whisky A Go Go: the Complete Recordings-a box that doubles Stax’s 2010 set Live on the Sunset Strip, which contains about half of the sets from that April ’66 stint-Redding reminds the audience they’re cutting a record and, in a way, the sets are structured as recording sessions. But the concerts alone weren’t the main thing: These shows were designed to be the primary source for an album, one that could capture the raw power of Redding on wax and hopefully bring in a wider audience. That alone made the three nights at the Whisky a step forward from Redding, who was hungry to become a star on his own terms. He had to work to win that crowd, which he does by the end of the set, by which point they’re cheering “Respect.” At that point, Redding wasn’t unknown, particularly in R&B quarters-he had three Billboard R&B Top 10s, with a fourth soon to follow-but such gutbucket soul shows simply weren’t played in mainstream rock venues like the Whisky A Go Go.

Once Otis hit the stage on April 8, the applause was polite but not enthusiastic. Indoors there is a different dynamic, particularly if it’s a crowd confronted with something they’ve never seen before, which was certainly the case of the Los Angelinos that headed to the Whisky to see Otis Redding that April weekend in 1966. In the open air, excitement spreads like fire.

& the M.G.’s-because he benefitted from the festival setting. It happened later at the Monterey International Pop Festival in ’67-backed then by Stax/Volt house band Booker T. Otis managed that crossover but not at the Whisky. So they set up shop right on the Sunset Strip, home to such hip rock‘n’rollers as the Byrds, Love, the Turtles and the Doors, figuring there was no better place to introduce Redding to a white audience. The idea wasn’t to have Otis record pop music, but rather bring his act straight to the rock audience. Redding’s residency was a deliberate attempt on the part of the singer and his management to move him out of the Chitlin Circuit and into the mainstream. This is the residency that is captured in its entirety on Stax’s six-disc box Live at the Whisky A Go Go: the Complete Recordings. For his ’66 stint at the Whisky A Go Go, he was backed by his road band, the Otis Redding Revue-a ten-piece group similar to the bands who supported him whenever he toured the south. A few songs earlier, he first informed the crowd that they were recording the concert with plans of releasing it as an album, playing the newly-written “Good to Me” for the second time in nine songs simply because it was the single and they needed to get it right. Otis Redding says these words just before launching into “Respect” on April 8, 1966, wrapping up the first of seven sets he’d play over the course of three days at Los Angeles’ Whisky A Go Go.

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