Recording and Release
Pain in My Heart includes songs from Redding's 1962–1963 sessions. Stewart signed Redding for Stax and released Redding's debut single "These Arms of Mine", with "Hey Hey Baby" on the B-side. "These Arms of Mine", released on the Volt sister label on October 1962, but charted in March the following year, became one of his most successful songs, selling more than 800,000 copies.
In the 1963 session, "That's What My Heart Needs" and "Mary's Little Lamb" were recorded and cut in June 1963; the latter became one of the worst-selling singles by Redding. According to Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records author Rob Bowman, in these two songs "Otis sings with a harsh, impassioned gospel voice", and saw similarities with the voice of Blind Boy Archie Brownlee, and further reckoned the ending of the first would have made Redding "a suberp gospel singer had he chosen to record in that idiom." "That's What My Heart Needs" became Redding's second single on Stax.
The title track, recorded on September, the next year, sparked some copyright issues, as it sounded like Irma Thomas' "Ruler of My Heart". After a few months, the latest recorded single, "Pain in My Heart", with the B-side "Something Is Worrying Me", peaked at number 60 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. Rob Bowman summarizes "Pain in My Heart" as "Otis's dynamic control is front and center as he uses his voice as a horn, swelling and decreasing in volume, swallowing syllables and worrying the word 'heart'." Later he asserted, that "It was Otis's most successful effort to date, commercially and aesthetically."
The last single, "Security", was released on April 1964 and charted at number 97 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. According to Matthew Greenwald of Allmusic, the song is "A stinging, up-tempo groover" and "showed Otis Redding stretching his funky rock & roll roots. Aided by the usual gang of Stax musicians, it's one of his tightest early records. As noted in the essay in the Rhino Records Dreams to Remember anthology, the song could have easily succeeded as an instrumental." The remaining tracks are covers of popular songs, such as Rufus Thomas's "The Dog", Richard Berry's "Louie Louie", Little Richard's "Lucille", or Ben E. King's "Stand by Me".
Despite the alleged copyright infringement, Pain in My Heart was released on Atlantic Records' subsidiary Atco Records on January 1, 1964 and peaked at number 20 on Billboard's R&B chart and at number 85 on Billboard's Hot 100.
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