Songfacts®:

• Redding wrote this with Jerry Butler ("For Your Precious Love," "Only the Strong Survive") in a Buffalo hotel room. The song finds Otis in a predicament: his love affair is going cold, but he's been loving her for so long, he can't stop now.
• This was Redding's best selling single and biggest hit while he was alive. Redding died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Brad Wind - Miami, FL, for above 2
• In 1969 a cover by Ike and Tina Turner peaked at #68 in the US, selling over 500,00 copies. Bob Krasnow, who bought the track to Ike Turner then produced their version, recalled in a 1971 Rolling Stone magazine article that Ike hated Otis Redding: "He just didn't think Otis had it."
• The Rolling Stones covered this in 1966 and released it on their live album Got Live If You Want It!. This song, along with "Fortune Teller," were actually recorded in a studio with audience noises dubbed in. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Bertrand - Paris, France
• The famed multi-instrumentalist Booker T. Jones played piano on several of Otis' hits, including this one. Speaking to Mojo magazine October 2011, he recalled: "My experience having been a church player, and having had the classical experience, really helped there. The 'walk-ups' on those songs are classical type walk-ups, the way the chorus progresses to where the chromatics strike, that emotion. Those were integral to me as a person and to the song. Working on something like that, Otis and me became very good friends, you know, spending time on the road or in a studio together. 'I've Been Loving You Too Long' and 'Try A Little Tenderness.' Those were, I think, some of our best moments together."