Booker T. & The MG's - Green Onions

Released - October 1962

Genre - Soul

Producer - Jim Stewart

Selected Personnel - Booker T. Jones (Organ/Guitar/Bass/Keyboards); Steve Cropper (Guitar); Lewie Steinberg (Bass); Al Jackson, Jr. (Drums)

Standout Track - Green Onions

Honestly, it really doesn't matter that Booker T. & The MG's spend most of this album's running time trying very hard to do something even half as good as its title track. If the title track were a bit less stand-out brilliant, maybe it'd be a problem, but here it's really not. What you get with Green Onions is a number of really fun, perfectly decent slices of atmospheric, instrumental soul all serving to back up one of the finest blues-rock instrumentals of all time, and that's more than enough. Everybody knows "Green Onions," whether you know what it's called or who played it or not. It's that swirling, swampy organ piece used to immediately conjure up any number of culturally ingrained impressions of Americana that we all carry somewhere in our subconscious. A scant few seconds of Booker T. Jones' gargling, whirling organ and Steve Cropper's wiry, flinty guitar licks and we're all in some sort of New Orleans night-life scene in our heads, or maybe driving across some sort of vast American plain. It's one of the most immediately evocative pieces I know of, and whether that's in part down its all-pervasive use in film and TV as much as to its own musical integrity I don't know, but I do know it's just incredible.

Booker T. & The MG's were one of the most prolific and hard-working instrumental groups of the 60s thanks to their role as the resident house band at Stax Records. Hundreds of classic soul records by the likes of Wilson Pickett or Otis Redding would have been graced with the sounds of Jones and Cropper et al providing instrumental backing, and bassist Lewie Steinberg and Al Jackson, Jr. (later replaced by Donald "Duck" Dunn) providing the rhythm section. In between recording sessions for Stax's established artists, the band would occasionally jam together, and happened to be working on what would eventually become "Behave Yourself" when Stax president Jim Stewart was passing and liked what he heard. Amazingly, "Green Onions" was initially slated to be the B-side to "Behave Yourself" until eventually all concerned were convinced by the superiority of the former. "Behave Yourself" is a moody, slow blues number that has a lot of atmosphere going for it, but doesn't really worm into your brain the way "Green Onions" does.

By the time Green Onions emerged as a full album, the single had already become hugely successful and been covered dozens of times, finding itself used in numerous films and adverts, so the band were under pressure to try and match it with a whole album's worth of great material. Of course, they don't manage to match it, but nor do they record anything here that's remotely dull. Perhaps their inability to come up with any other original recordings that came close to it in quality (the only other self-penned song on Green Onions along with the already-released title track and "Behave Yourself" is "Mo' Onions," a slower and more thoughtful retread of their big hit which continues the mood and atmosphere of it but doesn't quite take off like the original song does) was what consigned them ultimately to never reach such commercial heights again - they would continue to record prolifically as Stax's backing band and have the occasional modest hit under their own name, but this was their one moment of being truly iconic.

The rest of the album, besides these originals, consists of instrumental covers of popular soul and R&B hits, the most recognisable of which include a playful, mischievous take-off of Ray Charles' "I Got A Woman" and a jubilantly party-esque version of Phil Medley & Bert Berns' "Twist And Shout." It says a lot for the ability of the band to really inject personality and playfulness into their instrumental music that on neither track do you really miss the presence of a vocal melody. Jones quickly proves himself one of the finest organists of the 60s - it's a difficult instrument to really get much tone or variation out of as the keys aren't touch-sensitive and therefore can't vary much in volume or sound, so for him to get such evocative flavours out of it is hugely impressive. The only other person that springs to mind with a similar playing style is Rod Argent, who gets a similarly smoky, moody sound from his organ solos on the Zombies' "Time Of The Season" on Odessey And Oracle, but that record came out six years later in 1968, so Jones is certainly blazing a trail. Cropper's guitar playing, meanwhile, is like a razor-wire, snapping and cutting out of the mists of Jones' Hammond organ solos to punctuate certain moments in the music.

The album suffers slightly from its sequencing - opening with the massive standout track is always a risk, particularly when it's then followed by pretty much all the up-tempo numbers on the first side and more of the down-tempo ones on the second - it means the album's second half becomes a more slow-moving meander through slow jams and thoughtful blues numbers like "Lonely Avenue" and "Stranger On The Shore", with all the fun R&B of "Twist And Shout" and the like now a distant memory. But like I say, ultimately, who cares? You'd have to be a very stony-hearted individual to not give credit to an album that includes a song as fun as "Green Onions," and fleshes itself out with plenty of perfectly enjoyable slices of soul and blues. One of the quintessential albums that sum up the sound of 60s soul.

Track Listing:

1. Green Onions (Steve Cropper; Booker T. Jones; Lewie Steinberg & Al Jackson, Jr.)

2. Rinky Dink (David Clowney & Paul Winley)

3. I Got A Woman (Ray Charles & Renald Richard)

4. Mo' Onions (Steve Cropper; Booker T. Jones; Lewie Steinberg & Al Jackson, Jr.)

5. Twist And Shout (Phil Medley & Bert Berns)

6. Behave Yourself (Steve Cropper; Booker T. Jones; Lewie Steinberg & Al Jackson, Jr.)

7. Stranger On The Shore (Acker Bilk)
8. Lonely Avenue (Doc Pomus)

9. One Who Really Loves You (Smokey Robinson)

10. You Can't Sit Down (Dee Clark; Kal Mann & Cornell Muldrow)

11. A Woman, A Lover, A Friend (Sidney Wyche)

12. Comin' Home Baby (Bob Dorough & Ben Tucker)