Booker T and The MGs and Me...

For years, people thought I was white. They just assumed that the leader Booker T. must be one of the white guys. It wasn't until we were on TV later in the 60s that people realized who was who... All of us in the MGs loved the blues and felt privileged we could play music all day. The race thing never existed, it never does for musicians... nothing levels the field like music. When the music is right, race disappears, and people who enjoy it realize they have more in common than they thought.
Booker T. Jones
I would say it's a simple, earthy sound...just born out of our blues and country and jazz roots and also gospel. It was a sound that, you know, we consciously tried to keep simple and with a lot of feeling.
Booker T. Jones recording at Stax Records in Memphis

Soul Limbo (1968) signed by Booker T, Al Jackson, Steve Cropper, Donald Duck Dunn

Otis was the valet for a band from Georgia. He was carrying the clothes and doing the driving and going for food and coffee and shining shoes or whatever he had to do to keep the band going. And I remember the day he pulled up with - Johnny Jenkins and The Pintoppers was the name of the group he was working for. They just basically came in, and he sat around and waited, and they did their demo for Stax. And after they did their demo, Otis asked if he could sing a song, which was a little inappropriate, but they, we allowed him. (Stax Records owner) Jim Stewart and (guitarist) Steve Cropper and the rest of us allowed him to sing a song with us, and that song was "These Arms Of Mine." And so everyone was moved by that, so at that moment, he became Otis Redding.
Booker T. meeting Otis Redding for the first time
If we'd had a kitchen at Stax - we didn't have a kitchen, we didn't have a conference room, we didn't have a restaurant, we didn't have any recreational facilities, so we always went in the middle of the day for our recreation to the Lorraine. That's where we had our lunches, they had a swimming pool, and I remember Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd had the room down at the end of the hall, I think it was 206, booked all the time. I can't remember any hit song that they wrote that they didn't write at the Lorraine. It was a home away from home for us. So if Dr. (Martin Luther) King had been shot in our kitchen at Stax, it would've been the same...
Booker T. reflecting on working at Stax and the Lorraine Motel

And Now! (1966) signed by Booker T, Al Jackson, Steve Cropper, Donald Duck Dunn

Arranger, composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer, Booker T. Jones has had a remarkable sixty-plus year career. Whether flexing his considerable Hammond B3 chops on his million selling instrumental hit “Green Onions,” co-writing (with soul great William Bell) the blues standard "Born Under A Bad Sign" for Albert King, performing at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 with his close friend Otis Redding on a revamped and transcendent “Try A Little Tenderness," producing Bill Withers' debut Just As I Am, or producing Willie Nelson's quintuple platinum selling record Stardust, Booker T. has had a towering influence on popular music since the 1960s.

Born in Memphis, Booker grew up in a musical family. His father was blessed with a sonorous voice and sang gospel in the church, while his mother played piano, "The way she played the piano sunk into my being. I was born listening to her. When she sang at the church, the room quieted as she gave renditions of gospel pearls and classic arias... People at church also requested my father, Booker T. Jones Sr., sing "His Eye Is On The Sparrow" a cappella. There were no dry eyes when he finished. His sterling tenor voice with its vibrato and sincere delivery ensured that."

Banging on a toy drum set purchased at a five and dime store gave way to a brand new clarinet given to him by his father and, according to Booker, "my life was changed forever." Lessons followed and Booker proved to be an adroit and quick study. Soon, it was time for a proud father to show off his talented son at Cade's, a local barbershop, for Booker's first public performance, "The shop quieted as I began the first notes. The tune I picked was a very popular song I had heard on a TV show, "Skokian," which I taught myself on my new clarinet. It was the first time I played for an audience - the men recognized the tune instantly. After I played the last note, there was silence. I was thrown off by this. Did they enjoy the song? Did I miss some notes? One by one, they started to smile and applaud, The kept clapping, so long that I felt uncomfortable. I didn't know what to do. I made a nervous bow and rushed over to the window to put my clarinet back in its case and sat down close to my beaming father." How fitting that a barbershop performance would inaugurate a career that is as robust and celebrated today as it was then.

Note By Note. (2019) signed by Booker

A gifted musician and child prodigy, Booker could play the oboe, saxophone, trombone, bass, guitar, piano and organ. His professional debut happened rather serendipitously, "Well, I was in 11th grade, and my friend (songwriter) David Porter knew that Rufus Thomas and his daughter Carla were recording, and I guess they had requested a baritone sax part on a song, and David thought of me. David drove over to the high school, came up with some type of hall pass and got me out of class and somehow came up with the band director's keys and keys to the instrument room. So down we went to get the baritone sax out of the instrument room and into the borrowed car and over to Stax Records and through the door, and there I was." The song "Cause I Love You" was a hit for the fledgling record label Satellite Records, which would soon change its name to Stax Records and become a renowned and revered record label. A sixteen year old Booker T. Jones was recruited to join the house band.

It was not without complications, as Booker had to navigate his other responsibilities, "Oh, I convinced them. I actually had a paper route. That was my job in the afternoon, and I convinced them to try me out on the piano and eventually organ. And I played organ on a William Bell song, which they liked, that part of "You Don't Miss Your Water" on one of those sessions. So after I played that part, I had the job."

Stax Records' session work continued with other artists when Booker enrolled in the esteemed Jacobs Music School at Indiana University, where he later received an honorary doctorate. Booker recalled, "The structures that I started to learn at Indiana and the musical rigor started to show up, I think, in my musical choices in the studio. I started to learn the European contrapuntal rules and I started to learn how to write music and write for different instruments, and those tendencies and leanings started to show up in the music of Stax and the studio." It was a heady and hectic schedule. Booker studied classical music composition and theory during the week, and then returned to Memphis on the weekends to record seminal soul tracks with artists William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding. No doubt, it was an exhausting pace.

In 1962, Booker T. (still in high school!), guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist Lewie Steinberg, and drummer Al Jackson were hired to back a session for singer Billy Lee Riley. Riley was a no show and the band started riffing on "Behave Yourself," an instrumental that featured Booker T.'s organ fills. Stax owner Jim Stewart liked the groove and wanted to record the song as a single. However, he needed a B-side and Booker T. started playing "Green Onions," a song Booker had been playing in local clubs on piano. Booker switched to a Hammond B3 for the recording. Of the song title, Booker revealed, "The bass player thought it was so funky he wanted to call it "Funky Onions," but they thought that was too low class, so we used "Green Onions" instead." There were other rumors about the origin of the title - Steve Cropper suggested it was named after the Green Badger's cat, others felt it was a marijuana reference. No matter, "Green Onions" became a Number One Billboard hit in 1962 when the single was re-released as an A-side and also as a full length album. A beloved instrumental soul groove and standard, "Green Onions" was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library Of Congress in 2012, and it has been featured in the movie soundtracks American Graffiti and Quadrophenia. Not a bad beginning for a then seventeen year old Booker T. Jones and his friends, but they were just getting started!

The Booker T. Set (1969) signed by Booker, Steve Cropper, Donald Duck Dunn

They just needed a band name. When they were the Stax house band supporting Otis Redding, The Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett and others in recording sessions, they were anonymous. That changed when they released their first single, as Booker remembered, "Well, the band needed a name when we recorded "Green Onions." Al Jackson, the drummer was, you know, 'But what will we call it?' He said, 'Well, with Booker T, and the...' and they just came up with the MGs. There was this engineer on the song, Chips Moman, he was driving a little British Leyland sports car, it's called an MG. And so he looked out the window, Booker T. and The MGs."

Booker T. and The MGs released eleven albums from their inception in 1962 to 1971, featuring originals and lots of covers of popular songs. Perhaps, their most ambitious effort was McLemore Avenue, released in 1970, an homage to The Beatles' Abbey Road, replete with Booker, Duck Dunn, Steve Cropper and Al Jackson walking across the street away from Stax Records, dubbed Soulsville, USA to counter Motown Record's moniker Hitsville USA, its chief competitor and rival. Twelve of the Beatles songs from Abbey Road appear as three long instrumental medleys, tracks that exude Memphis soul and grease. As a show of respect, John Lennon, a long time fan of Booker, credited his band on the obscure 1974 instrumental "Beef Jerky" as "Dr. Winston and Booker Table and The Maitre d's,' released as the B-side on Lennon's hit "Whatever Gets You Through The Night."

McLemore Avenue (1970) signed by Booker, Steve Cropper, Donald Duck Dunn

Unhappy with the new direction at Stax Records with Al Bell as co-owner and producer, Booker headed west to Los Angeles, settling in Malibu, where he bought actress Lana Turner's nearly five acre estate for $89,000 in 1971. Booker explained the curious and unfortunate terms of his purchase in his 2019 biography, Time Is Tight, "With $40,000 down, there was no bank involved and Lana carried the $49,000 balance herself. She made a few surprise visits to collect mortgage payments and survey her investment. The small print in the contract specified Malibu's age-old stigma that no land could be sold to a black. The deed transferred to me anyway..."

Notwithstanding this dreadful and abhorrent legal clause, California proved to be a welcome respite for Booker. He met Clarence Avant, a founder of Sussex Records, one of the first record labels owned by an African American, "And he had a startup label that he was working with in California, and he had this guy that was building airplane toilets in Inglewood who had songs that he really loved. His name was Bill Withers, and Clarence called up and sent Bill out to my ranch in Malibu. And Bill came up with... a little tablet full of papers and an old, beat up guitar and started to sing songs, and he had some great songs..." That meeting led to Bill's debut Just As I Am, which included soul standards "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Grandma's Hands," and launched Bill's impressive career.

A chance meeting with Willie Nelson in 1977 on the beach in Malibu (who knew Willie was an avid jogger?!) led to Booker inviting Willie to his home studio. Always the non-conformist, Willie had decided to record an album of jazz and pop standards from the Great American Songbook, much to the chagrin of his record label who wanted Willie to continue in the outlaw country mode which Willie had been mining so successfully. Willie asked Booker to produce "Moonlight In Vermont" and he was so happy with the result that he asked Booker to produce the entire album. Columbia Records was leery about Willie's drastic style change so, in their astute judgment, they ordered fewer copies to be shipped, as they expected an indifferent and tepid commercial response. Of course, Stardust proved to be an enormous hit, selling over five million copies, the largest seller in Willie's enormous and impressive discography. Thanks in no small part to Booker's clean, spare and thoughtful arrangements.

I was blessed to see Booker T. and The MGs on February 4, 1999 at Tramps, a beloved now shuttered rock club on West 21st Street in Chelsea, New York City. Tramps was a gritty venue with eclectic programming: Willy DeVille, Bob Dylan, Eminem, MF Doom, Merle Haggard, Modest Mouse, Smashing Pumpkins and Steve Earle all performed shows there. I was excited to see Booker and his fellow reunited MGs: guitarist Steve Cropper (co-wrote "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay" with Otis!) bassist Duck Dunn (in The Blues Brothers band along with Steve and Booker) and guest drummer Steve Potts, filling in for his cousin Al Jackson Jr. who was tragically murdered in 1975, a huge loss for music. Booker T. and The MGs performed together sporadically over the years, releasing Universal Language in 1977 and That's The Way It Should Be in 1994, but rarely toured.

The show was exceptional. Highlights included "Soul Limbo," a cover of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I Was Looking For," "Green Onions," "Hip Hug Her," “Time Is Tight” and "Hang 'Em High," a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western that never sounded so funky and groovy. Each song allowed the players to stretch out and expand their craft and instrumental prowess. Whereas the original tracks released decades earlier were two-three minute sublime soul capsules, these were extended workouts that stretched to seven to nine minutes. It was pure bliss. Presiding over the proceedings was Booker T., an inexhaustible source of soul and funk, a thin smile creasing his face, more Cheshire Cat than a gloriously mad King Lear! The encore had the only vocal, Steve Cropper led a dreaded sing along (yes, it was as bad as it sounds) on "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay," a melody he wrote with lyrics penned by the immortal Otis Redding.

Jammed Together (1969) signed by Steve Cropper

After the show, I met the band and they signed some vinyl. Booker was mellow and just as cool and collected off stage as on. I thanked him profusely and mentioned my love for all things Hammond B3, including Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff. "Yes, I love Jimmy Smith, he was a big influence," he said with a smile as he handed McLemore Avenue back to me. Booker didn't say much else but he radiated a warmth like the whirring purr of the Leslie speaker that powered his Hammond B3 organ. Steve Cropper was just as nice and welcoming. He loved Jammed Together, a guitar tour de force with Albert King, Pops Staples and Steve shredding, "Wow, I loved playing on this one, it was great fun," he said as he handed it back to me. Duck Dunn, not so much. I had to chase him down on the street as he was hailing a cab. Not sure why he was so reluctant, but he did sign begrudgingly and I wished him well.

Booker T. Jones, an incredible and influential artist. Long may he create!