Songfacts®:

• "Hard to Handle" is Credited to Allen Jones, Al Bell, and Otis Redding. Al Bell was a career music industry affiliate, as a DJ, producer, songwriter and record executive. He is best known for co-founding Stax Records. Allen Jones was also a record producer, a writer and recording engineer at Stax records. Many artists on the Stax roster were also involved in the songwriting process, and Redding had a hand in composing many of his songs.
• This was released as the B-side to the "Amen" single, which charted even higher. Redding had a career total of 11 Top 40 hits in the Billboard charts, an astounding achievement for somebody who did not live to see his 27th birthday.
  
  Otis Redding's tragic death by plane crash forms part of this list of musicians likewise killed in plane and helicopter crashes.
• The most famous cover version of this song by far is the one by The Black Crowes, which is one of their two Top 40 hits (the other was "She Talks To Angels"). Other covers include ones by Tom Jones, The Grateful Dead, and Mae West for the 1970 film Myra Breckinridge.
  
  Yes, we mean "come up and see me sometime," "is that a banana in your pocket," that Mae West. Sadly, the aforementioned film is widely regarded as a flop and disaster - in fact, it's on many lists of worst films ever made, although it has cult classic status for being an exploitation film.