Tuesday 26 April 2011

Booker T. & the M.G.'s - Green Onions (1962)



Recent weeks have been pretty hectic for me work-wise and it looks like it ain't gonna stop in the near future, so I'm really struggling to find the time to write stuff on my blog. Nevertheless, I'm just gonna try to keep it short and simple and let the music do the talking. And if there's any type of music that can tell a good story, it's gotta be blues!

'Green Onions' was the debut album of Booker T. & the M.G.'s. It was released in 1962 on Atlantic's memphis-based Stax division, which had in its roster such renowned artists as Otis Redding, Albert King, Sam & Dave and Isaac Hayes.

The group started off as a session band, providing the backbone for many Stax artists at the time. One day, in a break between recordings, they started jamming around with a couple of riffs and fiddled with a little song Booker T. Jones has written way back in high-school - 'Green Onions'. Jim Stewart, the then president of Stax liked their sound and decided to release their debut record with 'Green Onions' as the a-side and 'Behave Yourself' on the flip-side. The single enjoyed great success, selling over a million copies, and this prompted the band to release a whole album.

At the time of the recording of their first full-length release, the band consisted of 4 people: Booker T. Jones (organs, bass guitar, guitar, keyboards), Steve 'The Colonel' Cropper (guitar), Lewie Steinberg (upright bass) and Al Jackson Jr. (drums). Later on, the band replaced Steinberg with Donald 'Duck' Dunn, who has played with them ever since. You might remember both Dunn and Cropper from the legendary 1980 film 'Blues Brothers' - they were both featured in the film and were also members of the original 'Blues Brothers' band.

Booker T & the M.G.'s is kind of a peculiar band. All of the guys in it are really session musicians first and foremost. They have backed a plethora of famous singers on thousands of records, playing on and producing many hits. Booker T. wrote such great tunes as: 'I've Never Found a Girl (To Love Me Like You Do)', 'I Love You More Than Words Can Say' and Albert King's 'Born Under A Bad Sign', which was covered by such powerful bands as 'Cream', with Clapton on board, and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (by far my favourite rendition). Suffice it to say, Sam & Dave's fantastic 'Hold On! I'm a Comin'' features Booker T. (playing the tuba!!!) and the rest of the M.G.'s with Donald 'Duck' Dunn's killer bassline.

Nevertheless, the group managed to record a great album, that has defined southern soul music for a whole decade. Bands on both sides of the Atlantic were trying to imitate that unforgettable sound of Booker's Hammond organs and Steve Cropper's Fender Telecaster guitar and the groove both of them created.

The 'Green Onions' album is a 35 minute instrumental voyage, filled with blues-infused soul goodies. The album features 12 songs, ranging from slower, kinda mellow tunes like: 'Stranger On The Shore' or 'Lonely Avenue', to faster, rock'n'roll-ish songs like: 'You Can't Sit Down' or 'Twist And Shout', and to the groovy bits like: 'Comin' Home Baby'. There's a bit of everything really. What they all have in common is the fantastic guitar work of Cropper, where hes able to subtly accompany Booker with delicate choruses but also jump into finger-twisting solos, and the great sound of Booker's organs which serve as a trademark sound for the whole album. Prime time soul music with a dash of an R'n'B feeling, a hazy blues aura and jazz sophistication. You might think to yourself - how the hell could they play Ray Charles' 'I Got A Woman' without a singer?! Well, the truth is, their music is so good you don't even realise that this song ever needed any lyrics.

You could have heard some of their songs before - a lot of the tunes were used as a soundtrack to 'Get Shorty' (starring Travolta, De Vito, Hackman and a few others), and 'Behave Yourself' was featured in the Coen brothers' awesome picture: 'Big Lebowski'. Rings a bell?





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