Waldo Point, Sausalito — Where Otis Redding Wrote 'Dock of the Bay'

Otis Redding wrote '(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay' while staying on a houseboat at Waldo Point Harbor in Sausalito, California, in the summer of 1967 — the weeks following his triumphant performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June. Redding had been the revelation of Monterey: a Southern soul singer largely unknown to the rock audience, he converted the crowd within minutes and left the festival with a new and enormous fanbase. He retreated to the Sausalito houseboat to rest and write, and sitting on the dock watching the boats and the bay, wrote a song quite unlike anything in his previous catalogue — slower, more reflective, infused with a weariness and contentment that the uptempo soul workouts of his Stax recordings had not touched.

Redding recorded 'Dock of the Bay' at Stax Studios in Memphis on 22 November 1967, less than three weeks before his death. He died on 10 December 1967 when his private plane crashed into Lake Monona near Madison, Wisconsin. He was 26 years old. The song was released posthumously in January 1968 and became his only number one single — the biggest commercial success of his career arriving after he was no longer alive to experience it. Steve Cropper, who co-wrote the song with Redding, added the whistling section to fill a space Redding had said he would complete but never did. The whistling became one of the song's most characteristic elements.

Waldo Point Harbor in Sausalito remains a working houseboat community on the north side of San Francisco Bay. The bay views from Sausalito — across the water toward San Francisco, with the fog rolling through the Golden Gate — are among the most beautiful in California, and the dock-and-water imagery of the song maps directly onto this landscape. No formal marker identifies the specific location where Redding wrote the song. Sausalito is accessible from San Francisco by ferry from the Ferry Building, a journey that crosses the same water Redding was watching from the dock.