The single also made the Top 40 on CFUN in Vancouver. It also made it to #41 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1965, thanks to cracking the Top Ten on Top 40 radio in Winston-Salem (NC), Atlanta and Marietta, Georgia.
Pitiful” was his second Top Ten single on the Billboard R&B charts. Redding had a string of hits on the R&B charts, and “Mr.
The single climbed to #3 in Charleston, SC, and #4 in Atlanta. In the summer of ’64, Otis had another hit crossing into Top 40 radio with “Security”. A subsequent release, “Pain In My Heart”, topped the charts in Griffin, Georgia, “#4 in Winston-Salem, NC, and WAMS in Wilmington, Delaware, and #6 in Tucson, AZ, in the winter of 1963-64. His first single for Stax was “These Arms Of Mine”, which made it to #1 in Beaumont, Texas, #6 on WKLO in Louisville (KY) and #9 in Atlanta. Once “Shout Bamalama” was getting airplay Stax Records executives took notice and offered Otis Redding a record deal. When we returned to Macon, I wasted no time creating the Orbit label and putting “Shout Bamalama” on it.” The B-side was “Fat Gal”, with Otis Redding’s backing group, The Pinetoppers, credited on the label. As we drove and listened to legendary DJ John R on Nashville ’s WLAC, Otis said, “Bobby, if that man played my record I would think I had made it”. We went on to Columbia, SC and met with a program director, Big Saul at radio station WOIC, who also promised heavy play, but only if the label was changed…. Stopping at Augusta radio station WTHB, we were told by the DJ it would be played if it were taken off the Confederate-flagged record label. Smith recalls, “Otis and I went on the road promoting “Shout Bamalama”. He met Bobby Smith who recorded Redding’s first single. In 1961 he went into the office of Confederate Records in Macon, Georgia. Otis Redding got married and began writing songs. Soon afterward, he joined the Upsetters to replace Little Richard who had given up rock ‘n roll for religion. Cake and the Mighty Panthers and toured the chitlin circuit in the Deep South. In 1958 he won a $5 prize at a teenage talent contest fifteen weeks in a row. He worked as a well digger and a gas station hop.
When his father got tuberculosis in 1956, Otis quit school to earn extra cash for his family. While he was a teenager, Otis performed gospel songs on Sundays on a local radio station, WIBB, earning $6 for each appearance. In his childhood he sang at a local African-American church choir and learned to play the guitar and piano. His dad was a sharecropper and subsequently worked at the Air Force base at Macon. At the age of two he moved to Macon, Georgia.
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