Ben Cauley’s final gig with Otis Redding was by all accounts a momentous one, as the trumpeter and his band mates in the Bar-Kays backed the celebrated soul singer on rip-roaring versions of hits such as Respect, Try A Little Tenderness, Mr Pitiful and Satisfaction.
By the time they finished their set at Leo’s Casino in Cleveland it was late and when they took Redding’s twin-engine Beechcraft to the next gig in Wisconsin on the following day — December 10, 1967 — the exhausted singer and his band soon fell asleep on the flight.
Cauley was sitting immediately behind Redding. Shortly before 3.30pm, he was awoken by the plane’s violent shuddering. He recalled turning to saxophonist Phalon Jones, who was alongside him: “Phalon looked out the window — what he saw, I don’t know — but he just said, ‘Oh no!’ I got up, unbuckled my seatbelt to see what it was. The next thing I remember, I came to and was in all this water.” The aircraft crashed into Lake Monona, on the east side of Madison, at a sharp 35-degree angle. As the impact tore off a wing, Cauley was thrown out of the hole in the fuselage. After blacking out and regaining consciousness, he managed to grab hold of a seat cushion in the wreckage.
As he struggled to remain afloat, he saw the bodies of some of his colleagues in the water, an image that haunted him for the rest of his life. He was finally pulled from the lake by a police boat after 20 minutes, suffering from hypothermia and shock but with only superficial cuts. “My head was swollen and bleeding, and I remember I had only one shoe.”
Taken to the hospital, Cauley was told that he was the sole survivor. “I kept asking, ‘Are they alright?’ And this guy just looked at me and said, ‘Well, son, you’re the only one alive’.” Unbuckling his seatbelt had saved him. Seven others died in the crash and the bodies of several of them were found still attached to their seats.
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There was one other survivor from Redding’s band as the bass player James Alexander had not been on the flight. Once Cauley had recovered, he and Alexander put together a new version of the Bar-Kays, working at Stax Records in Memphis, where they played on recordings by Isaac Hayes, Aretha Franklin, Rufus Thomas and the Staple Singers. A devout man, he thanked God for saving his life but suffered for years from nightmares in which he heard the cries of his dying band mates. In such moments he said that he tried to think of the “sweet soul music” they made together.
His first marriage, to Lucille, ended in divorce; his second wife, Shirley, whom he married in 1970, predeceased him. He is survived by five daughters — Chekita, Shuronda (who became a singer), Miriam, Monica and Kimberly — and two sons, Phalon and Ben.
Born in South Memphis, Tennessee, in 1947, he learnt to sing in a local Baptist church and to play trumpet at school. In 1965 he formed a band with Jones, Alexander, guitarist Jimmy King, drummer Carl Cunningham and keyboardist Ronnie Caldwell. Originally named the Imperials, they became the Bar-Kays in 1966 when they joined the Memphis-based Stax label as the second house band. The group recorded their own top 20 hit single, Soul Finger, in 1967. That year they were asked by Redding to become his touring band. “We said we’re still in school, so we can’t go on weekdays. He said, ‘I’ll take care of that, I’ll pick you up in my plane on Fridays’.”
He left the band in 1971 to become a freelance session player. Over the years he worked on recordings by BB King, Al Green and Boz Scaggs. He had a second brush with death in 1989 when he had a stroke. Doctors told his family he would not survive more than two days; he recovered and resumed playing, though his health remained fragile.
Cauley returned to the crash site only once, in 2007: he played his trumpet on the lakeside and sang elegiac renditions of Redding’s hits Try A Little Tenderness and (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.
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Ben Cauley, trumpeter, was born on October 3, 1947. He died on September 21, 2015, aged 67