In 1967, I was a very young reporter for a newspaper called The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio… and crazy in love with the music of Otis Redding. When I read that he was coming to a Black nightclub called Leo’s Casino on Cleveland’s East Side, I somehow convinced my white editors — Sinatra and Dean Martin and Tony Bennett fans — to let me interview him. I had never seen Otis in person before.
The club, Cleveland’s hottest Black nightclub, was filled. Otis bounded onstage — a big man who, after the first few bars of his first song, had the predominantly Black audience in his big Black palm.