The Bee Gees Wrote This Song for Otis Redding — But He Never Got to Record It
In 1967, the Bee Gees were still newcomers trying to establish themselves outside Australia.
Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb had arrived in Britain with enormous ambition, but they were far from the global superstars they would eventually become.
Then their manager, Robert Stigwood, gave them an unusual assignment.
Write a song for Otis Redding.
At the time, Redding was one of the most powerful soul singers in America. His voice could turn almost any lyric into something urgent and deeply personal.
Barry and Robin Gibb began writing with that kind of voice in mind.
The result was “To Love Somebody.”
It was very different from the disco music that would make the Bee Gees famous a decade later. The song moved with the feeling of American soul — slow, aching and built around a simple declaration of love that sounds almost painful in its intensity.
The brothers hoped Otis Redding might record it.
But before that happened, the Bee Gees recorded the song themselves for their 1967 album Bee Gees’ 1st.
Barry sang the lead.
Robin and Maurice surrounded him with the harmonies that were already becoming the brothers’ trademark.
The recording became one of the earliest signs that the Bee Gees could do far more than British-style pop.
They understood soul.
They understood longing.
And Barry’s performance gave the song an emotional vulnerability that would remain one of its defining qualities.
“To Love Somebody” reached No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 in America.
But the story soon took a tragic turn.
On December 10, 1967, Otis Redding was killed when the small plane carrying him and members of his touring band crashed into a Wisconsin lake.
He was only 26.
The singer the Bee Gees had imagined for “To Love Somebody” would never make his own recording of it.
Yet the song kept traveling.
Over the decades, artists from completely different musical worlds recorded their own versions.
Nina Simone transformed it into something intensely personal.
Janis Joplin brought raw blues-rock emotion to it.
Rod Stewart, Michael Bolton and many others later discovered the same thing:
The song did not belong to one voice or one era.
Perhaps that was because Barry and Robin had accidentally written something much bigger than a song for another singer.
They had written about a feeling almost everyone eventually understands — loving someone so deeply that words never seem quite enough.
The Bee Gees would later sell millions of records with “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” “How Deep Is Your Love” and countless other hits.
But “To Love Somebody” arrived before all of that.
Before the white suits.
Before Saturday Night Fever.
Before the Bee Gees became synonymous with disco.
It was simply three young brothers trying to write a soul song worthy of Otis Redding.
He never got to record it.
So the Bee Gees did.
And more than half a century later, it remains one of the songs that best proves their greatest talent was never just their voices.
It was their ability to write songs that other singers wanted to make their own.
Barbara Mandrell Retired From Music at 18 — One Night at the Grand Ole Opry Changed Her Mind
Long before Barbara Mandrell became one of the biggest stars in country music, she had already decided her music career was over.
She was only 18.
That decision sounds almost impossible in hindsight.
Because Barbara Mandrell had been preparing for the stage practically since childhood.
Born in Houston on Christmas Day in 1948, she learned accordion and how to read music before entering first grade. After her family moved to California, she began studying steel guitar at about ten years old while also learning saxophone at school.
Then someone important noticed her.
Country guitarist Joe Maphis saw the young Mandrell performing at a music trade convention in 1960.
He was impressed enough to bring her into his Las Vegas act.
Barbara was still a child, yet she was already sharing a musical world populated by professional country performers.
Before long, she appeared on the Los Angeles television program Town Hall Party and joined a national package tour headlined by Johnny Cash.
By 14, she was performing with her family band at military bases in the United States and Asia. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
It looked as though music had already chosen her.
Then Barbara walked away.
She had fallen in love with Ken Dudney, the drummer in the Mandrell family band.
Dudney eventually joined the Navy and trained as a pilot.
The couple married in 1967.
Barbara decided that was enough.
At 18, she retired from music.
For someone who had spent much of her childhood performing, it was an extraordinary choice.
But the retirement did not last.
When Dudney was away with the Navy, Barbara visited her family in Tennessee.
One evening, she attended a taping of The Porter Wagoner Show before the Grand Ole Opry.
As Barbara watched the performers, something came back.
She leaned toward her father, Irby Mandrell.
She told him she could do what she was watching onstage.
More importantly, she wanted to do it again.
She asked whether he would manage her.
Her father believed in her.
The decision made that night changed everything. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Barbara soon signed with Columbia Records.
In 1969, she entered the Billboard country chart with her version of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.”
More hits followed.
By 1972, she had joined the Grand Ole Opry — the same institution connected to the night that helped convince her to return.
Then the career accelerated.
“Sleeping Single in a Double Bed” reached No. 1.
Her version of “If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want to Be Right)” also topped the country chart.
But Mandrell was becoming more than a recording artist.
She could sing.
She could dance.
She could play multiple instruments.
And onstage, she could move between traditional country, pop, soul, gospel, and show-business spectacle without losing her identity.
By the beginning of the 1980s, Barbara Mandrell was everywhere.
From 1980 to 1982, she starred with her sisters Louise and Irlene on NBC’s Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters, bringing country music into millions of American homes every week.
And the industry recognized what was happening.
The Country Music Association named Mandrell Entertainer of the Year in 1980.
Then she won again in 1981.
She became the first artist in CMA history to win the award in consecutive years. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
That same period produced the song that would become inseparable from her name.
“I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.”
The song looked back at a time when openly loving country music was not always fashionable.
Then country culture exploded into the American mainstream.
George Jones appeared on the recording, and the song became another No. 1 country hit for Mandrell
The title almost seemed to describe Barbara herself.
She had been playing steel guitar as a child long before television superstardom.
She had toured before she was old enough to drive.
She had quit.
She had started again.
And she had reached the top.
Her life would still bring serious challenges.
In 1984, a devastating automobile accident left Mandrell with multiple injuries and required a long recovery.
Yet she returned again, continuing to record, tour, and act before eventually retiring from performing in 1997. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
In 2009, Barbara Mandrell was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
It was a remarkable ending to a story that could easily have stopped decades earlier.
At 18, Barbara Mandrell thought she was finished with music.
Then she sat in an audience in Nashville and watched other performers doing what she had once done.
Something inside her changed.
She told her father she wanted another chance.
He believed her.
And the young woman who had retired before her career truly began eventually became one of country music’s defining entertainers.
