Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life

"I frankly find most musician biographies more useful than compelling, but Jonathan Gould’s account of Otis Redding’s tragically short life is gripping because Gould gets at what made Redding both a fascinating individual and an emblem. This is a Southern story of desegregation and enduring white supremacy and of country values encountering city opportunities; it’s a story of hope, conveyed within Redding’s electric performances, and disaster. (Few deaths in music history are more wrenching than the singer’s demise in a plane crash at only 26.) Gould’s book is a crucial contribution to our understanding of a time that’s too often obscured by mere nostalgia."