an addendum to amanda's post,
excerpted from Rick Moody's On Celestial Music:

1. Otis Redding as Purveyor of Celestial Music

Music has soul. We operate as though it does. In fact, music is one of the few areas of human endeavor where the word soul, even among secular types, is liable to go unchallenged. All kinds of music are occasionally imputed to have soul. Even music that doesn’t have anything but volume or a tiresome double-kick drum sound. Ray Coniff, to a listener somewhere, has soul. Who am I to say otherwise? Soul in these cases perhaps indicates earnestness, rhetorical force, and/or vocal polyps. Nevertheless, there are persuasive indications that the word soul does indeed manifest itself in music, and so maybe it’s useful here at the outset to point to a recording that demonstrates why music belongs in any discussion about heaven. So, along these lines, I’m going to describe briefly the mechanics of one example of soul music, namely, a live recording by Otis Redding entitled “Try a Little Tenderness.”

Lyrically speaking, “Try a Little Tenderness” starts as an exhortation to do better at peeling away the layers of defensiveness in a lover, a woman (in this case) who is not only weary, in the general sense, but maybe particularly weary of the traditional role of woman...

Still, this is to avoid mention of the dynamically satisfying freak out at the end of the song. The big ending! If celestial music is the music of the spheres, then the big ending of “Try a Little Tenderness” proves that music here on earth can also be tuned to the interstellar realms, especially when the rhythm section kicks in, and the horns start, and Otis begins his passionate exhortation as to how, exactly, tenderness is meant to be practiced (holding, squeezing, never leaving), and the horns work their way up the scale, likewise the rhythm guitar, chromatically, while Redding commences his soul shouting, and the crowd goes wild, hoping that he’ll play through the chorus just one more time! Yes, try a little tenderness! How could we resist! We have not tried sufficiently! So many areas of our lives remain unexplored! So many virtues seem to lie dormant in us! So much is failure and half-heartedness! Tenderness as opposed to oppressing the poor and disenfranchised, tenderness as opposed to military intervention in foreign countries! Tenderness as opposed to the amassing of money, power, and real estate!

What I mean to say is that this live performance of Otis Redding enacts the attempt at tenderness he promotes, and in this way his song proves itself, proves the validity of soul in music, by exercising the soul, and if you are not convinced by my recitation of these facts, get the Monterey Pop DVD and watch it, because I swear just as you can be absolved of your malfeasances by watching the pope on television, you can be made a better person by watching Otis Redding deliver this song; you will go into the next room, and you will look at your husband, or your wife, or your child, you will look at the people whom you have treated less well than you might have, and you will kneel in front of these people and you will beg for the chance to try a little harder and to make their burdens a little less burdensome. If those five minutes of grace are not an example of what lies out there, beyond what we daily understand, if those five minutes are not like unto a candle that glimmers in the unending darkness of life on earth, then I have no idea what paradise is.

yes! tenderness! i am trying it! what is paradise, really, but this soul, this soul. (not to mention the image of ducky singing this on pretty in pink.)