Otis Redding’s 1966 version of “Try a Little Tenderness” turns a gentle old standard into a soul storm. It starts softly—urging kindness to a lonely girl—but Otis builds the intensity bit by bit. By the end, he’s exploding with raw emotion as the band crescendos behind him. It wasn’t a huge pop hit, but it became one of Otis’s defining performances, showing how to build a song from a tender hush to a fevered roar.
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