Otis Reddings recording studio was in the back of a store front facing opposite the Macon Hotel

Otis Redding’s recording studio was in the back of a store front, facing opposite across the street from the Macon Hotel.There wasn’t much action in this small rural south Georgia town that fostered greats like Otis, James Brown, Little Richard, The Allman Brothers, Clarence Carter, and Johnny Jenkins.. After my parts were recorded I would climb into the glass windows display area and watch the night life while I dozed on the carpeted platform. I watched the working girls across the street coming and going til dawn, when they went home. Under the store was a dirt floored basement where the echo chambers had been built; cinder block rooms just big enough to place a microphone and a speaker inside the tiled interior. During one session, the engineer heard giggling on the vocal track and there was no one giggling in the vocal booth. I went down into the basement and found Danny squeezed inside a tiled echo chamber with a local Macon girl. excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2014 all rights reserved