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"Authors and architects of the Memphis soul sound...the
most influential stylists in modern American music." -
San Francisco Chronicle
The greatest soul instrumental band of all time features Rock
'N Roll Hall of Fame inductees Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper
and Donald 'Duck' Dunn.
Booker T. & The MG's boast an impressive list of credits
and hits. In addition to the array of seminal artists they have
backed up in the 60's, such as Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett,
Sam and Dave, and Rufus and Carla Thomas, among others, Booker
T. & The MG's are perhaps best know for their #1 Billboard
hit of 1962 "Green Onions." Guitarist Steve Cropper
and bassist Duck Dunn are also members of the Blues Brothers
Band, of film and recording fame.
In addition, individual members have collaborated with Bob Dylan,
Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Boz Scaggs, Willie Nelson, John Fogerty,
Natalie Merchant and many others.
Credits & Highlights
• House band for Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary PBS -TV
special and Columbia CD I Video
• House band for the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame HBO Grand
Opening Concert, Columbia CD
• Grammy nominated 9-cd Stax/Volt box set
• 1993 worldwide tour backing Neil Young
• 1994 Columbia Records release, That's The Way it
Should Be
• 1995 Grammy Award
• 1998 Booker T. & The MG's box set Time is Tight
(Stax/Fantasy)
If Yankee Stadium is "the house that Babe Ruth built,"
Stax Records is "the house that Booker T. and the MG's
built."
The MG's saga began one hot summer afternoon in 1962. A session
had been scheduled at the then-fledgling Stax Records for a
white rocker named Billy Lee Riley. Over the years everyone's
memory has gotten a tad hazy but either Riley didn't show up,
was too drunk to play or did not have adequate material ready.
Whatever the case, the four musicians ostensibly hired to back
him up whiled away their time jamming on a blues progression.
Startled by what he heard, Stax owner and erstwhile engineer
Jim Stewart had the good sense to turn a tape deck on and there
had emerged a finished track that was titled "Behave Yourself."
A B-side needed, the group worked up a riff that keyboardist
Booker T. Jones had been fooling around with for awhile and
that the world came to know as "Green Onions." Thus
was born Booker T. and the MG's and thus was a dynasty begun
in more ways than one.
"Green Onions" became an instrumental anthem for both
black and white America, peaking at Number One on Billboard's
Rhythm and Blues charts and Number Three on the Pop charts.
"Mo' Onions" soon followed as did "Soul Dressing,"
"Boot-Leg," "My Sweet Potato," "Hip
Hug-Her," "Groovin'," "Soul Limbo,"
"Hang 'Em High," "Time Is Tight," "Mrs.
Robinson," "Something," and "Melting Pot."
All charted and all defined what was hip and soulful in the
1960's. The original incarnation of Booker T. and the MG's was
Booker T. Jones--keyboards, Al Jackson--drums, Lewis Steinberg--bass,
and Steve Cropper--guitar. In 1964, Donald "Duck"
Dunn replaced Steinberg. As an integrated band in the South
in the 1960's, Booker T. and the MG's were the living embodiment
of what writer Peter Guralnick has termed the 'impulse towards
integration' that marked southern music at that time.
If this was the beginning and the end of the MG's story, they
would have rightfully earned their 1992 induction into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. But the MG's did so much more. Functioning
as the "house band" at Stax Records they backed up
virtually every soul artist who recorded for Stax and Volt in
the 1960's. Steve, Duck and Al continued to fill this function
into the early seventies. The list of seminal artists they accompanied
and wrote songs for includes Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Buddy
Guy, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, William Bell,
Johnny Taylor and many more.
The 1991 Grammy-nominated nine-CD box set The Complete Stax/Volt
Singles: 1959-1968 in essence, is a Booker T. and the MG's
box with a plethora of great guest artists. The group also managed
to co-write and play behind Wilson Pickett on "In The Midnight
Hour," "634-5789" and "Ninety-Nine and a
Half Won't Do" for Atlantic Records. Booker T. and the
MG's defined what became known as the sound of Southern soul
music.
Booker T. left Stax and moved to California at the turn of the
decade. A year later Steve Cropper also departed the company
setting up his own recording studio and label, both called Trans
Maxirnus. With Duck Dunn and Al Jackson staying on at Stax,
the MG's never officially broke tip, they simply stopped recording
together.
In California, Booker recorded a series of fine solo albums
and produced a range of artists including Bill Withers' block
buster hits "Use Me" and "Ain't No Sunshine,"
Willie Nelson's Stardust LP. Rita Coolidge's cover
of Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher" and Earl Klugh's
Magic In Your Eyes. Steve produced Poco, John Prine,
the Jeff Beck Group, Jose Feliciano, and Tower of Power among
others. Al and Duck provided the rhythm section for a host of
great latter-day Stax hits and Al also co wrote and played on
many of Al Green's early hits. Tragically, in 1975 Al Jackson
was murdered in the front of his Memphis home.
In 1977, with Stax alumni Willie Hall filling in for the late
Al Jackson, Booker T. and the MG's briefly regrouped for the
Universal Language LP on Asylum. Shortly thereafter,
Steve and Duck joined Levon Helm's RCO All-Stars and then received
a call from John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd which resulted in the
Blues Brothers Band. The Blues Brothers recorded three albums
including the Number One Briefcase Full of Blues as
well as making one hilarious movie. Booker T., meanwhile, resumed
his solo career hitting the charts in 1981 with "I Want
You." That same year Steve Cropper issued his second solo
album, Playin' My Thang.
In the 1980's all three surviving MG's remained active playing,
producing, writing and recording. An impromptu brief two song
reunion occurred in 1986 as Booker, Steve, and Duck by chance
were all in Memphis at the same time as the Memphis Music Festival
was being staged. Two years later, Ahmet Ertegun personally
phoned to ask the group to reunite for Atlantic's 40th Anniversary
concert at Madison Square Garden. All was set until Booker T.
came down with food poisoning the night before the concert and
Paul Shaffer ended up having to take his place.
Despite Booker's unfortunate illness, the rehearsals for the
Atlantic performance had generated enough sparks that the group
elected to play a handful of shows in Italy. A year later the
Montreaux Jazz Festival called and the MG's played a couple
of warm-up shows at the Lone Star Roadhouse in New York. A newly
rejuvenated Booker T. and the MG's played a select few dates
in each of the next few years and were inducted into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. They were the "house band"
for the historic Bob Dylan tribute at Madison Square Garden
in New York City in October 1992. For that gig, the MG's backed
everyone from Eric Clapton, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Mike
McCready, Stevie Wonder, and George Harrison to Lou Reed, Johnny
Cash, Dylan, and Neil Young. Young, knowing a good thing when
he heard it, asked the group to accompany him on his 1993 tours
of Europe and North America with opening acts ranging from Pearl
Jam and Soundgarden to Stone Temple Pilots. In amongst all this
activity, Booker T. and the MG's recorded That's the Way
It Should Be for Columbia, their first group album in seventeen
years.
"The biggest challenge," explained Steve Cropper,
"was to sound like Booker T. and the MG's. It might seem
easy but how do you sound like you sounded thirty years ago
and still have it fresh, up to date and technically together?
I'd lay a rhythm pattern and Booker would put a melody on top
of the pattern and then Duck would come in and put an incredible
bass on it. Somehow we did it. We believed in it and it happened."
To try and balance the old with the new, the group recorded
the album with two different tape machines: a 16-track analog
recorder to give it that older warm Stax sound and a 48-track
state-of-the-art digital tape recorder for that modern sheen.
Most of the album is actually analog but some of the overdubs
were done digitally. In Booker T.'s words, "We used the
best of what we got."
The sonic richness is palpable. "Engineer Michael Brauer
really brought that music to life," stressed Steve. "I've
been mixing for thirty years and I sat down on the board and
this guy impressed the hell out of me. He found things on that
tape that I'm not even sure we knew were there. He is just a
great sonic engineer."
One of the most difficult decisions facing the group was who
to replace drummer Al Jackson with. Blues Brother and X-pensive
Wino alumni Steve Jordan played on the bulk of the tracks while
Memphis legend James Gadson was called in for the MG's covers
of Janet Jackson's "Let's Wait A While," Bonnie Raitt's
"Have A Heart" and U2's "I Still Haven't Found
What I'm Looking For."
Jordan turned out to be an Al Jackson acolyte. "There was
almost a reverence from Jordan about Jackson," explained
Booker T. "He wanted to be Steve Jordan and he made a big
effort not to be Al Jackson, but at the same time he wanted
to pay tribute to Al! He did a pretty complex thing."
Jackson connoisseurs will note that Jordan understood the nuances
of the MG's original drummer down to the point where he delays
the backbeat just ever so slightly. "He was very adamant
about that," affirmed Cropper. "A lot of drummers
copy Al Jackson. They copy fills and patterns but they're not
getting into the soul of Al Jackson. That delayed backbeat was
Al's biggest trait."
Jordan, who also ended up co-writing several songs on That's
the Way It Should Be suggested the group cover the Temptations'
gorgeous "Just My Imagination" and came up with the
apt title "Mo' Greens" for the blues that sits in
the number two slot on the album. MG's fans will note the double
pun on both "Green Onions" and "Mo' Onions."
Booker T. and the MG's had always combined choice covers of
classic hits with originals. This album continues that approach.
Aside from the aforementioned Jackson, Raitt, U2 and Temptations
covers, the group also redefines the possibilities of Bob Dylan's
"Gotta Serve Somebody" and Ann Peebles' "I Can't
Stand The Rain." The former is funktified in the extreme
while the later builds to one climax after another.
Some people may be surprised by the group's version of U2's
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." "I
had loved that for a long time," explained Booker, "but
I didn't understand how the MG's would play it. I always loved
the melody of it but I needed to find a way to get the feeling
out of it so that it was different from the original. I insisted
that we close the album with it because it's a real high spiritual
note. That song means a lot to me."
The originals cover the gamut from straight ahead blues ("Mo'
Greens") to exquisite ballads ("Sarasota Sunset")
to funk extravaganzas ("Camel Ride"). The latter represents
new territory for the MG's.
"That's just me digging today's market," laughs Cropper.
"That's what I feel coming out of what I hear on the radio
all the time. I listen to rap music. I love it. I like the grooves--I'm
a rhythm man. I like that earthy kind of thing."
The sum total of the album's twelve tracks is a sonic feast
that is prototypical Booker T. and the MG's. It's a curious
and glorious fact that so many years later, Booker, Steve and
Duck could pick up and record an album so extraordinarily rich.
"This is something that came from the heart," smiled
Steve. "I think it's one of the best things we've ever
done. It's all mint. It's very honest stuff, that's why I think
it has validity. We're not out there to try and rip people off,
we're not selling some elixir. This is just the real guys playing
the real stuff."
In his own quiet way Booker T. concurred: "As far as I'm
concerned the music is speaking. It's saying the things I want
it to say. I feel really happy and fortunate that we can do
that."
At one of the Lone Star gigs two years ago, Isaac Hayes exclaimed
that the MG's are even better in the 90's than they were in
the 60's. That's the Way It Should Be makes Hayes'
proclamation manifest. Enjoy!
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