Guest Post: Alan Asnen on Otis Redding
Writer Alan Asnen shares how a concert poster found a new home with the family of the artist.
Good morning!
Alan Asnen is taking the wheel today, and sharing a story about his experience with Otis Redding.
I’ve always been fascinated with the stories behind the story. In my day job, I work for an airline, and there are hundreds of steps and people involved behind each & every flight. It takes an incredible effort to make things look routine. For every show I’ve seen, dozens—if not hundreds—of things had to happen before anyone took to the stage. These are the stories we never hear about and might not pay much attention to. We usually only hear about them when something has gone wrong.
Below is one of those stories behind the story, told in three parts by one of the people behind the scenes. It starts with Alan playing a tangential role in an Otis Redding show. He first shared that experience in an article submitted to The Riff, a Medium publication I help run. But as you’ll soon see, that was only the beginning of a much bigger story.
Like many of us, Alan has moved to Substack, and you can find him at the link below. When you’re done here, please check out his work & say hello!
And with that, I’ll hand it over to Alan:
Part I
My first public art—For Paul Krassner (1932–2019)
It was, shall we say, a total catastrophe—a screw-up of major proportions—but good enough for the promoters of the Lenny Bruce “concert,” and they paid me the huge sum of $25 for my handiwork. I was only fourteen years old, going to an art high school and working for the nationally famous underground newspaper, The East Village Other. I was learning the ropes, but I mostly swept the floors, ran for coffee, and cleaned the toilets.
Our office was directly above the old Village Theater in New York City (soon to become Bill Graham’s Fillmore East), and the vague association between that venue and our newspaper was at times prosperous and propitious.
But once the word became public—the Bruce poster was splashed all over Manhattan—several of my graphics mentors took me aside; they began more necessary tutoring and, thankfully, a bit of promotion as well.
Fewer toilets. More paste-up.
One day in late 1967, the folks from the Village Theater came up to ask if we could put together a small poster for a big show with a big star: Otis Redding.
They wanted something colorful for the Autumn season— but not too expensive, as they were running on their last legs. By mid-summer, they’d already begun seeing major groups like Moby Grape canceling on them. They’d begun holding more benefit shows to drum up community support (I first met James Baldwin in late August, who spoke at one of those benefits, so you know they were drifting from music even though Richie Havens sang “High Flyin’ Bird” during the show).
It was September. The show was scheduled for the third week of October. We had time. But we also had other work to do. Like, you know, a weekly newspaper. So we decided to divide this job among ourselves.
Spain Rodriguez had just been teaching me how to use shaded and dotted sheets of overlay to produce “color separation” by cutting through them with an X-Acto knife, and that was to be my job…after a few days of X-Actoing practice on non-finished products. I was fifteen. Give me a break. A master cartoonist, Spain was handling the design itself, with Peter Mikalajunas the difficult task of inking. Most of the lettering was done by a printing process and “melded” in.
Anyway, one would think—you’re one, aren’t you?—that, while doing the overlay work, I would be listening to something like, say, “Sitting On the Dock of The Bay”? Right?
I was reading this story by a friend the other day, and she just happened to mention that song off-handedly. This is what got my mind going and thinking about this story first. But, of course, she was focused more on The Beatles and “Eleanor Rigby.” This is mostly where my head had been for, oh, a year or two years or so prior to finding myself on that stool at fifteen years old, hanging over that brightly lit table in the dark back room of EVO, staring through yellow-and orange-tinted films of this beauty of a graphic.
But what was I listening to instead of any Otis Redding?
Over the preceding year at EVO, I had been allowed once in a while during my journey of learning to do the graphic regularly for the newspaper’s music columnist, Jules Freemond. So, being fifteen, I thought, while reading his column, “Hey, I could write that!!!”
Naturally!!!
Jules, being the nice guy, was always tossing the review records he received from the record companies my way. One day, he tossed this brand-smacking-new one in my hands, saying, “You know who Stevie Winwood is?”
I did, sort of, having been a fan of The Spencer Davis Group until the women around the office got sick of my singing “I’m A Man” all the time.
So, I was listening to THAT single he gave me from this new group called “Traffic” over and over, thinking I’d write about it, and get published and become a famous music critic like Jules.
And I did. Get published. Just like that.
That one time. Yay me. Ummmm… Where was I?
Oh, that concert? And the poster?
Otis and Carla canceled. No money at the Village Theater. Like I said.
Then poor Otis had that accident and crashed less than eight weeks later.
That’s why whenever you read a story of mine, don’t expect too much music criticism. At my age, I tend to drift.
Part II
Back in November I wrote a short piece about some graphics work I did when I was much younger and coming up in the world.
But the bigger story had to do with the fact that the work involved one of the greatest stars in the music industry, Otis Redding, who died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967, only weeks after my work was finished.
When I was all of 15 and he was only 26. When I had done so little and he had accomplished so much.
I am a big believer in coincidence. Nearly every piece I write involves coincidence, synchronicity, chance, or luck. I don’t believe anything good happens in this world without those ephemeral forces at play.
Several weeks after The Riff published that piece, I received an email from Arron Saxe at Kinfolk Management, who also represents the Otis Redding Foundation and Zelma Redding, Otis Redding’s widow, and mother of his children, also President and Founder of the Otis Redding Foundation.
Mr. Saxe had shown Ms. Redding that published story. She had seen the photograph of the poster and wanted a copy, obviously for its sentimental value.
Just as obviously, I did not possess a copy other than my own, nor did I have any way of obtaining another. I asked my most resourceful friends about the best possibilities, and they could find no better solution. There was no way to produce a reasonable copy from my original and no reasonable manner to detach my original from its frame and backing without some damage. Even the original framer suggested that the only solution was to give up the original.
Which is what I had assumed from the start.
Originally, I had hoped the Reddings might be able to make a copy on their end, but my framer told me again that possibility was a dead end.
I told a handful of friends what was happening, and the responses were generally, “Hey, that’s cool!” “What a great story!”
But one friend said, “I think you should keep it.”
Frankly, I was astounded. “Its sentimental value is far greater for the Redding family than for me,” I replied.
It was just hanging on my wall, another object for me to be proud of having taken part in decades ago. For me, the photographs, the stories, the memories are good enough.
Plus, consider all the Reddings have done for me, especially Otis and Zelda. Their music—Aretha’s “Respect,” “Dock of the Bay,” “A Change Is Gonna Come,” “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” and my favorite, “Try a Little Tenderness.” Over those same decades, the sheer joy they have brought into my life, the transcendence I have felt out of the mundanity or the miseries of my days living in their songs.
What a small payment this is for that debt. Think of all their music has done for you and for the world.
And now, in addition, for all the work that Zelma Redding, her children and grandchildren and everyone associated with the Otis Redding Foundation are doing to help others. How little this is in response for the treasures they bring into the lives of so many.
After the initial few moments of inquiry, there was no further hesitation on my part, and the framed poster was on it’s way to Zelma and family.
You can help the Otis Redding Foundation in their day-to-day work as well, without having to ship anything by FedEx.
Part III
For Otis and for Zelma
And for The Team
And, finally, one last go-around...
Giving… One More Time
Because three times the charm… That’s what they say.
Of course, so few paid attention the first time, and why should they have. All I did was toot my own horn. Talking about the distant past when I did something I probably had no business doing in the first place, some smartass fifteen-year-old pretending to be something he wasn’t…yet.
But then, something magical happened as a result. Magic does happen. There is magic in the world only because good people make it happen.
I came back to report on that magic. Lo, almost no one wanted to know about that good magic made by so many good people.
Why is that?
I assume it must have something to do with poor little me. It could not possibly have anything to do with what all those good people were doing. I heard a comment or two, perhaps questioning those good people. But I assume it must have something to do with me.
Then, out of the blue the other afternoon, a shock.
Expecting nothing…well, perhaps an itty-bitty tee-shirt as a returned kindness…you know, we do get weary wearing that same old shaggy thing every day…sorry...
….we get this huge package delivered.
What’s inside?
Hanging now where the Otis poster used to…
Plus, the complete works edition...
A personal note of thanks from Zelma Redding at The Otis Redding Foundation...
Oh…and I did get the tee-shirt…
By the way, the note told me that the poster I’d sent would be hanging in Otis Redding’s “music room,” where he and Zelma both listened to and wrote their music together.
That’s sweet.
Now… I don’t know what you might get if you sent them…anything. Maybe just a good feeling. Because you give to give, not to get.
And I didn’t do all this writing to get anything—especially this time since I don’t work at Medium anymore—except to hopefully get people to stop feeling cynical for a second or two, grab a cup of coffee or tea, check out the links below, and hunt up these good people in Macon who work 24/7/365 doing right.
366 days on a Leap Year. Like This year.
Spread the word. Please.
https://otisreddingfoundation.org/donate/
https://otisreddingfoundation.org/meet-the-team/
https://www.facebook.com/OtisReddingFoundation/
https://otisredding.com
Thank you to Alan for sharing this story, and thank you for being here.
Kevin—
What a beautiful story! I loved Alan’s phrase “you give to give, not to get”. Profound message, and beautiful turn of events in the end!
Love it. Such a cool story.