Booker T. Jones and band at City Winery, NYC (Credit: Alex Greene)
In a fitting warm up to this week’s 20th Anniversary of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music (see our April 27th cover story), Booker T. Jones was on the road this month, ostensibly to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of “Green Onions,” the tune that propelled Booker T. and the MG’s and Stax Records into the national spotlight. Given that the song was recorded and released in 1962, the most chronologically appropriate homage was at the museum last September, when Jones joined the Franklin Triplets, all Stax Music Academy alumni, in what would have been the record company’s old tracking room to play a short set of MG’s classics. And indeed, nothing could have topped the magic of that moment, now available as an episode of Beale Street Caravan.
But 2023 is becoming the de facto year of tributes to the classic track, cut almost as an afterthought by the group and originally dubbed “Funky Onions” by then-bassist Lewis Steinberg, until label co-owner Estelle Axton made it more palatable by changing the first word to “Green.” It was only this February, more than 60 years on, that Rhino Records re-issued the original Green Onions LP, notably the first album ever released by Stax.
Jones himself has paid tribute to the tune this year with multiple cover versions released on streaming services, all adapting the song’s basic riff to styles as disparate as Latin rock, straight rock, and country.
And so it was that an appearance by the famed organist, composer, and producer at New York’s City Winery on April 15th was billed as “Booker T. Jones: Celebrating 60 Years of ‘Green Onions.'” What was more surprising was the venue’s release of a special wine dedicated to both the song and the show. Sales of the dedicated vintage will benefit the Stax Museum.
(Credit: Alex Greene)
That night, my date and I sampled a freshly uncorked bottle as we settled into the spacious, sold-out venue and its sweeping view of the Hudson River, the dusky spires of Jersey City looming in the distance. Soon the band, sans Jones, took the stage and began playing the descending figure of “Soul Dressing,” a cut off the MG’s album of the same name. “Wow,” exclaimed a fellow patron, representative of the night’s older demographic, “it’s not every day you get to hear the MG’s!”
I refrained from correcting him, but in my mind I heard Steve Cropper’s recent quip that “if I went out with Booker now, we’d have to call it Booker T. and the MG!” Meanwhile, I was content to take in the band before us: Dylan Jones on guitar, Melvin Brown on bass, and Ty Dennis on drums. Soon Booker T. Jones himself sauntered out to the organ, looking dapper in a blue suit and flat cap, and “Soul Dressing” began in earnest.
What followed was a tight, focused journey through not only the MG’s catalog, but other Stax hits as well. The band, while missing the inimitable swing of the original Stax house band, was on point with the arrangements. Dylan Jones carried off many of Steve Cropper’s original guitar parts faithfully, though he couldn’t resist injecting a bit of shredding when he soloed at length. His work on the the MG’s “Melting Pot” was quite venturesome, but that was in keeping with the song’s original jazz-inclined aesthetic. Brown’s bass solo on the same tune also went far beyond anything the MG’s recorded, but was imaginative and soulful nonetheless. Throughout, Booker T. Jones’ playing was as funky, tasteful, and restrained as his recorded works, even when stretching out for extended soloing on “Green Onions” in the set’s midpoint. That tune, of course, elicited the evening’s most frenzied applause.
Vocalist Ayanna Irish stepped out to put across numbers more associated with female singers, such as “Gee Whiz” and “Respect,” the latter having more to do with Aretha Franklin’s cover version than the Otis Redding original, and her approach was appropriately old-school.
Booker T. Jones sang as well, and another surprise followed his brief reminiscence. “The first time I came to New York City, in 1962, I was at the Roseland Ballroom,” he said. “With Ruth Brown and Jimmy Reed.” Already holding a guitar after singing Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” (which he produced), he then launched into Reed’s “Bright Lights, Big City.” For a moment, you could imagine you were back home on Beale Street.
The show reached its climax with the smoldering build-up of the ostensible set-closer, “Time is Tight,” the coda of which seemed to throw the band for a loop. But as the applause died down, Jones immediately brought everyone back to Memphis. “I was standing on McLemore Avenue, and I see this guy pull up in a van from Georgia, and he starts pulling out guitar amps and suitcases and stuff and carrying them into the studio. Then he sits next to me on the organ and he wants to know if he can sing a song. And of course I say, ‘No, you can’t sing a song. You’re the valet!'” Laughter rippled through the room. “Anyway, he started singing this.” While I expected to hear “These Arms of Mine,” often associated with that story, Jones instead launched into another of Otis Redding’s great masterpieces from the early Stax era, “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now).”
At the song’s end, just as we were thoroughly melted into the floor, Jones brought things squarely into the contemporary age. “This song was written by Lauryn Hill, and it’s called ‘Everything is Everything.'” The tune, its title taken from a promotional slogan used by Stax in its heyday, and recorded by Jones in collaboration with The Roots, was the perfect way to remind us that, all anniversaries notwithstanding, this was a restless, thriving artist standing before us. Long live “Green Onions,” I thought, and long live Booker T. Jones.
We don’t often review singles in these pages, but we’ll make an exception given that this is a remake of one of, if not the, premier song of Memphis for over half a century — by its chief composer, no less.
“Green Onions” is a masterpiece one never tires of hearing, and the man who wrote its key riff and progression has always been a good sport about taking it out for a spin when he’s in town. That would be Booker T. Jones, of course, though it’s actually credited to band mates Steve Cropper, Al Jackson, Jr., and Lewie Steinberg as well, in the egalitarian spirit of both Stax Records and the 1960s.
Last year, while appearing at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Jones treated the audience to a beautiful rendition of the tune, accompanied by three Stax Music Academy alumni, the Franklin Triplets (Sam Franklin IV, Christopher Franklin, and Jamaal Franklin). And while we often hear the tune performed in countless bombastic ways here in the Bluff City, this was clearly “Green Onions” done right: bare bones, tight, and funky. Furthermore, while speaking after the performance, Jones announced that he would soon have a new recording out to celebrate the song’s 60th Anniversary.
Jump forward to 2023, and that new track has indeed been released, though seemingly without fanfare. No press from Fantasy Records accompanied the drop, nor were there any reviews. And yet its appearance last November was perhaps one of the most significant events of 2022, in terms of its relevance to Memphis music history.
Jones himself noted the release on his Instagram page: “On this 60th Anniversary of the beloved song ‘Green Onions,’ it seems magical that my love for Latin music would be intertwined with my first musical hit. Listen to the new ‘Cebollas Verdes Cut’ out now!”
The single’s full title, “Green Onions (Cebollas Verdes Cut),” should tip off listeners that this is not your grandma’s “Green Onions,” for Jones, not one to rest on his laurels, has re-imagined the tune in a Latin boogaloo style.
And while this transforms the song’s feel considerably, the core riff and harmonies remain the same, making for a highly satisfying recasting of the song for the new century. With Melvin Brannon II on bass, Lenny Castro on percussion, Ty Dennis on drums, Jones himself on the Hammond B3, and his son, Ted, on guitar, the song retains some of the original’s glorious lack of clutter and overproduction, even as it propels itself forward on a new groove.
Careful listeners will immediately recognize that Jones has incorporated nearly all of his original solo into the new arrangement, and of course the instantly recognizable organ riff is preserved. From there, Jones takes the tune into new sonic territory, with classic Latin start-stop breakdowns and some innovative harmonies and soloing.
At the root of the tune is a bass line more in the vein of what some call the New Orleans “Spanish tinge.” One might almost mistake it for a remake of “Black Magic Woman” for a minute, until Jones enters with that inimitable solo. From there, Ted Jones brings a decidedly more progressive quality to the guitar solo, also echoing Santana.
If you don’t care for the sound of that, skip the radio-friendly A side and go straight to the deep cut, a much longer edit that plays more fully on the possibilities of mixing the boogaloo beat with the organ. Indeed, there is no guitar solo here, only the extended riffing and soloing of Jones, a master of the Hammond B3.
In all, this is a satisfying gem of a single, and, given the city’s influx of Latin American emigres since the original single dropped, a welcome update to fit current demographics. One can only hope that it becomes the standard of this century, carrying on that slinky, earthy groove well into the next.
Booker T. Jones is such an iconic Memphian that he’s still identified with his hometown a half century after moving to California. And, that relocation notwithstanding, he’s an enthusiastic advocate of all things Memphis, including the Memphis of his youth, and the supportive community he continues to find here today.
So, it’s wholly appropriate that Jones will be inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame (MMHOF) on Thursday, September 15th. While Booker T. & the MG’s were inducted as a group in 2012, this year’s honor will serve as a recognition of Jones’ accomplishments as an individual, outside of that seminal band, including the many songs he’s penned, recorded, arranged or produced since leaving Stax Records. As such, it’s as much a recognition of the California Jones as the Memphis Jones.
Jones will be performing at Thursday night’s ceremony. In addition to Jones, the 2022 inductees include the late blues and jazz saxophonist, composer, arranger, and educator Fred Ford, Grammy-winning producer and engineer Jim Gaines, American Sound Studios keyboardist, singer, and Grammy winner Ronnie Milsap, former chair of Elvis Presley Enterprises Priscilla Presley, Sun Records artist, songwriter, and producer Billy Lee Riley, Stax artist and Grammy-winning soul giant Mavis Staples, and the iconic drummer for Jerry Lee Lewis and other Sun artists (as well as singer and producer) J.M. Van Eaton. Gaines, Jones, Milsap, Presley, and Van Eaton are all scheduled to attend, while local favorites Reba Russell and John Paul Keith will also perform.
All in all, very good company for Booker T. Jones. Anticipating his imminent homecoming, Jones recently spoke at length with the Memphis Flyer from his home in northern California. Only one day after a mass shooter terrorized the city, our hearts were heavy, yet Jones helped put the day’s events in perspective.
Memphis Flyer:How strange that Memphis is in the headlines for its crime, just when you’ll be coming here to celebrate its positive, musical side.
Booker T. Jones: My condolences to the families. And I hope everybody does something positive in the wake of that. Do something nice for somebody, or for yourself. Try to do something that’s the opposite of that negative energy. Something positive. It’s a huge tragedy.
I was just thinking how appropriate your song, “Representing Memphis,” featuring Sharon Jones and Matt Berninger, is at this moment. It really celebrates the neighborhoods, sights, and sounds of the city.
Well, it’s good to mention Sharon’s name. She was one of the most positive people I’ve known. It was wonderful meeting Sharon. She’s from Brooklyn, I think. She was a very neighborhood-friendly type of person.
“Representing Memphis” also featured Matt Berninger on vocals.
Yeah, he’s another good friend of mine. He’s in a band called The National.
Since you moved to California 50 years ago, it seems you’ve done one collaboration after another.
Yeah. Of course, I miss Memphis. I wouldn’t have been able to go to California if Memphis hadn’t been so good to me. I have a lot of friends there. I’m coming there in a few days, and it’s going to be great to see my family. My family’s from Red Banks, Mississippi and Holly Springs, Mississippi, and they’re all coming. So, it’s going to be great.
How does it feel to return to the Stax building?
I tell you what, Alex: That is hallowed ground. It just is. I remember when I went back a few years after they had torn down the building, and I picked up some bricks and brought them back to California. Because when you walk in the area of 926 East McLemore Avenue, it’s just great. That’s an indication of the spirit of Memphis. It’s all over that town.
It seems you’ve become more appreciative of Memphis in recent years, more so than in the ’70s and ’80s.
That’s true. I have embraced it more, emotionally. Intellectually, I’m maturing. I’m 77 years old. Hopefully I’m maturing somewhat. And just realizing and recognizing who I am and where I come from.
You even named your new record label after the street you grew up on… Edith Street.
Yeah, that’s where it started. That’s another place that’s emotional for me to go back to.
Being inducted into MMHOF apart from the MG’s must be very meaningful to you, after your struggle to get more recognition as an individual before you left Stax.
It is, it’s a really big deal to me. I owe so much to so many people in Memphis who gave me so much at such a young age. And I had so many mentors. And there was such a spirit of giving in my community. In the music community at school, at church, in the neighborhood. So I’m a result of that giving. And it’s a lesson to me. I’m just very fortunate.
It’s ironic, maybe that spirit of giving and support also gave you the strength to break away from Stax.
Yeah, it definitely was a positive/negative, yin/yang type of thing, and of course as soon as I got to California, I had other mentors. Namely Quincy Jones, who was right there, introducing me to this kind of music, that kind of music. And I was immediately surrounded by other mentors. Herb Alpert and so many others. But a lot of kids don’t get a chance to do that. They don’t have a recording studio around the corner from their house. They have to go to Nashville or New York or Los Angeles if they want to be in music. So, I was fortunate that I was born right there in Memphis with a studio three blocks away.
Booker T. Jones (Credit: Piper Ferguson)
It’s interesting that you mention Quincy Jones. I saw a documentary where you spoke about one particular moment, hearing Ray Charles’ “One Mint Julep” on the radio, which led you to pursue the Hammond organ.
That was the moment. I was on McLemore Avenue, listening to the radio, and I was thinking ‘Oh, what great horns!’ And then I heard the organ and thought, ‘Wow, that’s such a cool sound!’ It wasn’t a sound you heard very much. And I thought if I could just do that, I’d be happy. And I am happy. And it was Quincy’s band on that record. Quincy wrote the arrangements, and Ray was actually a saxophone and organ player in Quincy’s band. Quincy was the man who put all that together.
It was kind of coming full circle, when you connected with him personally later in life. That must have meant a lot.
Yeah. He was a mentor. And he was one of those guys like Willie Mitchell. Willie would take young guys like me and put them up on stage and just try them out. That’s what he did with Mabon ‘Teenie’ Hodges, who was a good friend of mine. Willie did that with me, on the bass. Willie is a really good example of that Memphis spirit I’m talking about. And of the mentors I had there.
People often think of Stax Recrods and Hi Records as competitors, but there was a whole local scene that transcended the labels.
Oh yeah, directly. Well, Willie let me play baritone sax in his band, and baritone sax is the instrument that got me into Stax. David Porter took me into Stax to play baritone sax on “Cause I Love You.”
One thing you mention in your autobiography was a friend from Egypt, Mina E. Mina, and the female singer whose work he introduced you to.
Uma Kalthoum. My Egyptian friend in Malibu was a disciple of hers, and we would sit and just be moved by her voice.
California was really a world destination, wasn’t it? So many of these cultures were converging and influencing pop music.
Exactly.
Are there recordings of yours that show more of a world music influence?
Definitely so. So many different kinds of influences were right there, close together. Bill Withers came to California, Leon Russell, and the Brothers Johnson. Quincy was crazy about them. He had a special spot in Hollywood — a room at 1416 North La Brea, right at the corner of La Brea and Sunset Boulevard. And that was sort of a nexus. It was A&M studios, where his office was. So, if you were an arranger — and that’s what I was, an arranger/producer; I played a lot of sessions — his place became a go-to place for a lot of people.
Are you at work on a new album now?
Yeah. It’s the 60th Anniversary of “Green Onions,” and that was the song — I wouldn’t be talking to you if I hadn’t stumbled onto recording that song. That was 60 years ago, so I’m going to do a tribute to that. It was June, 1962 when we recorded it, and I was supposed to be in church. It was a Sunday, I remember. Memphis changes on Sunday morning. Or, at least it did back then. Everyone was in church by [10 a.m. or 11 a.m.]. If you weren’t there, you were doing something kind of strange. I think we were supposed to play on a session. Steve remembers more about it. It was a session that got called off or finished early, and then we had free studio time.
And “Green Onions” was kind of an afterthought, the B side?
Exactly. And “Behave Yourself” was me trying to imitate Ray Charles. I had a little band at a club on South Parkway, and Errol Thomas was playing bass, and Devon Miller on drums. And I would always start with that, because of Quincy and Ray and that B3 sound; and I was trying to imitate Ray, so I came up with that blues, “Behave Yourself.” Why would they just have an M1 organ sitting there that day? It was my dream. It was amazing! I had actually used it once before, because I played on William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” and also I had played for Prince Conley in that room when I was a young kid. Charlie Musselwhite reminded me of that. He was a friend of mine from Mississippi.
Was it the track, “Going Home”?
That was it! I remember that day because I played on that song, but the room was so big, I never did get to meet Prince Conley the whole time.
You write about Maurice White, founder of Earth, Winde & Fire, in your book. Did you guys ever connect in later years? Did you play together once you were established artists?
Oh yeah! He loved to play tennis and when I moved out to the San Fernando Valley, he would come out there and play tennis with me, and ridicule me [laughs]. We were good friends in high school. I think I met him in 8th grade at Porter [Junior] High. And I was the only student with a key to the band room at Porter. So, he walked in and said, ‘Hi, I’m Maurice White.’ His destination after school was my house. And we would play tunes by the Jazz Messengers, or whatever, because I had a record player.
Maurice didn’t really have a family. His grandmother was all he had. And I never did even see his mother until he graduated from high school. That was a good, tight friendship between me, and David Porter, and Maurice. That’s how it all started. Maurice on drums and Richard Shann, who played piano, and I had a bass.
Did you dabble on saxophone in that trio?
I probably did, because I always tried to play reeds: oboe, clarinet. I played clarinet in the band, and the school had a baritone sax.
It sounds like Richard Shann was a great jazz player.
Oh, yeah. He was the true musician of the three of us, the most dedicated. He lived way out in South Memphis, and he would walk to my house to jam with us.
Whatever became of him?
He passed years ago.
It makes me wonder if you and Maurice had ever played music together after you left Memphis. But it sounds like you mainly played tennis?
You know, he was like a brother to me. My dad brought his drums home from AMRO Music, his first drum set. But Maurice was missing his family so, as soon as he graduated from high school, he moved to Chicago. And then Ramsey Lewis heard him play somewhere, and Maurice was gone, basically. He was unavailable. Of course, you know I wanted him to be a drummer in my band, and that would never happen. He started Earth, Wind & Fire and they were instant stars, and he got such a good position in Chicago, and I don’t remember him ever coming back to Memphis.
A lot of people don’t realize he was from Memphis.
That’s amazing, because he was. LeMoyne Gardens. I doubt if I would have been able to make it to Stax if I hadn’t known Maurice. My dad used to drive me, Maurice, and Shann to the middle of Arkansas, nowhere, til 10:00 at night, to play a little gig, playing for four/five people, then drive us back at 2 in the morning. That’s what we did. The bass, the drums, the whole thing in the car, it was a sight! In my dad’s ’49 Ford.
Your dad sounds like a prince of a man.
Yeah, he was the sponsor. He was the reason it all happened. He drove my friends around. He was the guy. I was lucky there. Maurice didn’t have any of that, no mother or father. So, he came to my house.
He’s already been inducted into the MMHOF, so you guys will be side by side now.
That’s good to hear!
The 2022 Memphis Music Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony takes place Thursday, September 15, 7 p.m., at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are on sale now for only $30, and are available at www.ticketmaster.com or the Cannon Center box office.
Paul McKinney, director of student success/alumni relations at the Stax Music Academy (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
The young student knew how far the guidance of a good music teacher could take him. “It was assumed that you would play jazz,” he wrote many years later. “Memphis’s young musicians were to unwaveringly follow the footsteps of Frank Strozier or Charles Lloyd or Joe Dukes in dedicating their lives to the pursuit of excellence.” The young man had a jazz combo with his friend Maurice. “Because he cosigned the loan for the drums, loaned us his car, and believed in us, Maurice and I were both deeply indebted to Mr. Walter Martin, the band director. You could hear a reverence in his voice when he spoke Maurice’s name.”
Yet he gained more than material assistance from his high school education. “I took music theory classes after school. Professor Pender was the choral director at Booker T. Washington, and like the generous band directors, Mr. Pender made an invaluable contribution to my musical understanding.” Pondering his lessons on counterpoint, the student thought, “What if the contrapuntal rules applied to a twelve-bar blues pattern? What if the bottom bass note went up while the top note of the triad went down, like in the Bach fugues and cantatas?” And so, sitting at his mother’s piano, he wrote a song.
He had only just graduated when the piece he composed came in handy. Though it was written on piano, he suddenly found himself, to his amazement, in a recording studio, playing a Hammond M-3 organ. He thought he’d try his contrapuntal blues on this somewhat unfamiliar instrument. Why not?
That’s when the magic went down on tape, and ultimately on vinyl. It was an unassuming B-side titled “Green Onions.” To this day, the jazz/blues/classical hybrid that sprung from a teenager’s mind remains a cornerstone of the Memphis sound. The teenager, of course, was Booker T. Jones, co-founder of Booker T. and the MGs. As he reveals in his autobiography, Time is Tight: My Life, Note by Note, his friend, so revered by the band director at Booker T. Washington High School, was Maurice White, future founder of Earth, Wind & Fire. Their lives — and ours — were forever changed by their high school music teachers.
It’s a story worth remembering in these times, when the arts in our schools are endangered species. And yet, while you don’t often hear of band directors cosigning loans or handing out car keys anymore, they remain the unsung heroes of this city’s musical ecosystem. The next Booker T. is already out there, waiting to take center stage, if we can only keep our eyes on the prize.
Mighty Manassas The big bang that caused the Memphis school music universe to spring into being is easy to pinpoint: Manassas High School. That was where, in the mid-1920s, a football coach and English teacher fresh out of college founded the city’s first school band, and, right out of the gate, set the bar incredibly high. The group, called the Chickasaw Syncopators, was known for their distinctive Memphis “bounce.” By 1930, they’d recorded sides for the Victor label, and soon they took the name of their band director: the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra. They released many hit records until Lunceford’s untimely death in 1947.
Paul McKinney (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
Nearly a century later, Paul McKinney, a trumpet player and director of student success/alumni relations at the Stax Music Academy (SMA), takes inspiration from Lunceford. “He founded his high school band and took them on the road, with one of the more competitive jazz bands in the world, right there with Count Basie and Duke Ellington. And I’ve tried to play that stuff, as a trumpet player, and it’s really, really hard! And then one of the best band directors in Memphis’ history, after Jimmie Lunceford, was Emerson Able, also at Manassas.”
Under Able and other band directors, the school unleashed another wave of talent in the ’50s and ’60s, a series of virtuosos whose names still dominate jazz. One of them was Charles Lloyd, who says, “I went to Manassas High School where Matthew Garrett was our bandleader. Talk about being in the right place at the right time! We had a band, the Rhythm Bombers, with Mickey Gregory, Gilmore Daniels, Frank Strozier, Harold Mabern, Booker Little, and myself. Booker and I were best friends, we went to the library and studied Bartok scores together. He was a genius. We all looked up to George Coleman, who was a few years older than us — he made sure we practiced.”
Meanwhile, other talents were emerging across town at Booker T. Washington High School, which spawned such legends as Phineas Newborn Jr. and Herman Green. It’s no surprise that these players from the ’40s and ’50s inspired the next generation, like Booker T. Jones, Maurice White, or, back at Manassas, young Isaac Hayes, yet it wasn’t the stars themselves who taught them, but their music instructors. Although they didn’t hew to the jazz path, they formed the backbone of the Memphis soul sound that still resounds today. As today’s music educators see it, these examples are more than historical curiosities: They offer a blueprint for taking Memphis youth into the future.
Paul McKinney with his father Kurl, a retired music teacher, and his brother Alvin, a saxophonist (Photo: Yuki Maguire)
Making the Scene And yet the fact that such giants still walk among us doesn’t do much to make the glory days of the ’30s through the ’60s within reach today. For Paul McKinney, whose father Kurl was a music teacher in the Memphis school system from 1961 to 2002, it might as well be Camelot. And he feels there’s a crucial ingredient missing today: working jazz players. “All the great musicians that came out of Memphis in the ’50s and ’60s were a direct result of the fact that their teachers were so heavily into jazz. The teachers were jazz musicians, too. We teach what we know and love. So think about all those teachers coming out of college in the ’50s. The popular music of the day was jazz! And the teachers were gigging, all of the time.”
Kurl, for his part, was certainly performing even as he taught (and he still can be heard on the Peabody Hotel’s piano, Monday and Tuesday evenings). “Calvin Newborn played guitar with my and Alfred Rudd’s band for a number of years,” he recalls. “We played around Memphis and the surrounding areas.” That in turn, his son points out, brought the students closer to the world of actual gigs, and accelerated their growth. In today’s music departments, Paul says, “there are not nearly as many teachers who are jazz musicians. As a jazz trumpeter and a guy who grew up watching great jazz musicians, that’s what I see. Are there a few band directors who play it professionally? Yes. But there aren’t many.
Trombonist Victor Sawyer, who works with SMA and MMI (Photo: Victor Sawyer)
Trombonist Victor Sawyer works with SMA but also oversees music educators for the Memphis Music Initiative (MMI). Both nonprofits, not to mention the Memphis Jazz Workshop, have helped to supplement and support public music programs in their own ways — SMA by hosting after school classes grounded in local soul music, MMI by helping public school teachers with visiting fellows who can also give lessons. Sawyer tends to agree that one important quality of music departments past was that the teachers were working jazz musicians. “All these people from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and before have stories of going to Beale Street and checking out music and having the opportunity to sit in. I feel like the high schools in town today aren’t as overtly and intentionally connected to the music scene. So you’re not really seeing the pipelines that you did. When you don’t have adults who will say, ‘Come sit in with me, come see this show,’ you lose that natural connectivity. So you hear in a lot of these classes, ‘You can’t do nothing in Memphis. I’ve got to get out of Memphis when I graduate.’ That didn’t used to be the mindset because the work was here, and it still is here; it’s just not as overt if you don’t know where to look.”
Music Departments by the Numbers A sense of lost glory days can easily arise when discussing public education generally, as funding priorities have shifted away from the arts. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calls the years after the 2008 recession “a punishing decade for school funding,” and Sawyer contrasts the past several decades with the priorities of a bygone time. “After World War II, there was a huge emphasis on the arts. Every city had a museum and a symphony. Then, people start taking it for granted, and suddenly you have all these symphonies and museums that are struggling. The same for schools: There’s less funding. When STEM takes over, arts funding goes down. The funding that the National Endowment of the Arts provides for schools has gone down dramatically.”
Simultaneously, the demographics of the city were shifting. “Booker T. Washington [BTW], Hamilton, Manassas, Douglass, Melrose, Carver, and Lester were the only Black high schools in the late ’50s/early ’60s. So of course people gathered there,” Sawyer says. “You’d have these very tight-knit cultures. Across time, though, things became more zoned; people became more spread out. Now things are more diffuse.”
Not only did funding dry up, enrollment numbers decreased for the most celebrated music high schools. Dru Davison, Shelby County Schools’ fine arts adviser, points out that once people leave a neighborhood, there’s not much a school principal can do. “What we’ve seen at BTW is a number of intersecting policies — local, state, and federal — that have changed the number of students in the community. And that has a big impact on the way music programs can flourish. And more recently, it’s been an incredibly difficult couple of years because of the pandemic. Our band director at Manassas, James McLeod, passed away this year. So we’re working to get that staff back up again, but the pandemic has had its toll on the programs.”
Davison further explains: “The number of the kids at the school determines the number of teachers that can work at that school. So at large schools like Whitehaven or Central, that means there are two band directors, a choir director — fully staffed. But if you go to a much smaller school, like BTW and Manassas, the number of students they have at the schools makes it difficult to support the same number of music positions. That’s a principal’s decision.”
A four-time winner of the High Stepping Nationals, Whitehaven High School’s marching band plays at a recruiting rally. (Photos: Justin Fox Burks)
The Culture of the Band Room Even if music programs are brought back, the disruption takes its toll. One secret to the success of Manassas was the through-line of teachers from Lunceford to Able to Garrett and beyond. Which highlights a little recognized facet of education, what Sawyer calls the culture of the classroom. “When you watch Ollie Liddell at Central High School or Adrian Maclin at Cordova High School, it’s like, ‘Whoa! Is this magic?’ These kids come in, they’re practicing, they know how to warm up on their own. But it’s not magic. These are master-level teachers who have worked very hard at classroom culture. The schools with the most thriving programs have veteran teachers who have been there a while, so they have built up that culture.”
In fact, according to Davison, that band room culture is one reason music education is so valuable, regardless of whether or not the students go on to be musicians. “I’m just trying to help our teachers to use the power of music to become a beacon of what it means to have social and emotional support in place. As much as our music teachers are instilling the skills it takes to perform at a really high level, they’re also creating places for kids to belong. That’s been something I’ve been really pleased to see through the pandemic, even when we went virtual.” Thus, while Davison values the “synergy” between nonprofits like SMA or MMI and public school teachers, he sees the latter as absolutely necessary. “We want principals to understand how seriously the district takes music. It’s not only to help students graduate on time but to create students who will help energize our community with creativity and vision.”
Kellen Christian, band director at Whitehaven High School (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
And make no mistake, the music programs in Memphis high schools that are thriving are world-class. By way of example, Davison introduces me to Kellen Christian, band director at Whitehaven High School, where enrollment has remained reliably large. With a marching band specializing in the flashy “show” style of marching (as opposed to the more staid “corps” style), Whitehaven has won the High Stepping Nationals competition four times. (Central has won it twice in recent years.) Hearing them play at a recruiting rally last week, I could see and hear why: The precision and power of the playing was stunning, even with the band seated. Christian sees that as a direct result of his band room culture. “Once you have a student,” he says, “you have to build them up, not making them feel that they’re being left out. So we’re not just building band members; we’re building good citizens. They learn discipline and structure in the band room. That’s one of the biggest parts of being in the band: the military orientation that the band has.”
Lured into Myriad Musics But Christian, a trumpeter, is still a musician first and foremost, and he sees the marching band as a way to lure students into deeper music. “Marching band is the draw for a lot of students,” he says. “When you see advertisements for bands from a school, you don’t see their concert band, you don’t see their jazz bands. The marching bands are the visual icons. It’s what’s always in the public eye.” But ultimately, he emphasizes, “I love jazz, and marching band is the bait. You’ve got to use what these students like to get them in and teach them to love their instrument. Then you start giving them the nourishment.”
As Sawyer points out, that deeper nourishment may not even look like jazz. “Even with rappers, you’ll find out they knew a little bit about music. 8Ball & MJG were totally in band. NLE Choppa. Drumma Boy’s dad is [retired University of Memphis professor of clarinet] James Gholson!” Even as Shelby County Schools is on the cutting edge of offering classes in “media arts” and music production, a grounding in classic musicianship can also feed into modern domains. True, there are plenty of traditional instrumentalists parlaying their high school education into music careers, like David Parks, who now plays bass for Grammy-winner Ledisi and eagerly acknowledges the training he received at Overton High School. But rap and trap artists can be just as quick to honor their roots. “Young Dolph, rest in peace, donated to Hamilton High School every year because that’s where he went,” notes Sawyer. “Anybody can do that. Find out more about your local school, and donate!”
Reminiscing about his lifetime of teaching music in Memphis public schools, Kurl McKinney laughs with his son about one student in particular. “Courtney Harris was a drummer for me at Lincoln Junior High School. He’s done very well now. Once, he said, ‘Mr. McKinney, I’ve got some tapes in my pocket. Why don’t you play ’em?’ I said, ‘What, you trying to get me fired? All that cussin’ on that tape, I can’t play that! No way! I’m gonna keep my job. You go on home and play it to your mama.’
“But I had him come down to see my class, and when he came walking in, their eyes got as big as teacups. I said, ‘Class, this is Gangsta Blac. Mr. Gangsta Blac, say something to my class.’ So he looked them over and said, ‘If it hadn’t been for Mr. McKinney, I would never have been in music.’” Even over the phone, you can hear the former band director smile.
“My first guitar was a Sears Silvertone,” quipped Booker T. Jones during his appearance at Crosstown Theater Saturday. Looking up at the walls around him, he added, “I must have bought it right here.”
Crosstown Concourse, of course, was then the regional warehouse and retail center for Sears. He went on to recall how he quit buying records at Sears after he discovered the Satellite Record Shop, the storefront at the entrance to Stax Records in its heyday. At Sears, he noted, you couldn’t hear the record until you bought it. “But Steve Cropper was happy to play records for you.”
Such are the perks of hearing one of the progenitors of classic soul play his hometown, where, once upon a time, lightning was captured in a bottle, or at least on vinyl. And Jones seemed to revel in the memories.
But the magic of such anecdotes paled before the majesty of the music, unerringly played by Jones and his band (which included his son Ted on guitar, Melvin Brannon, Jr. [aka M-Cat Spoony] on bass, and Darian Gray on drums). Time stood still as the sounds of Jones on the Hammond organ, complete with rotating Leslie speaker, filled the auditorium with the harmonies known from so many classic records.
Though Jones’ latest album, Note by Note, surveys tunes from across his lifetime as a player and a producer, Saturday’s set was decidedly Memphis-heavy, with a heaping dose of originals by Booker T. & the M.G.’s. There was “Green Onions” in all its minimalist glory, and “Time Is Tight,” complete with its powerful coda. “Hip-Hug Her” also was honored, albeit with a twist: flowing lyrics rapped over the tune by Gray. Alex Greene
Booker T. Jones and son Ted Jones
“And now, here’s a piece by George Gershwin,” Jones noted, before launching into the M.G.s’ arrangement of “Summertime,” as perfect a showcase of his organ mastery as any of their cuts.
But the legacy of that Silvertone guitar was also alive and well, as Jones picked up a Telecaster and sauntered to the front of the stage from time to time, delivering very personal interpretations of “Hey Joe,” a la Jimi Hendrix, “Purple Rain” by Prince, and others. At times, he sang sublime harmonies with his son. Alex Greene
Booker T. Jones on guitar
But the most sublime harmonies of the night came when Jones called “an old friend” to the stage, none other than the Queen of Memphis Soul, Carla Thomas. Jones, noting the importance of the Thomas family, and especially Carla’s father Rufus, described seeing the movie Baby Driver and unexpectedly hearing her sing in the soundtrack. Then they launched into “B-A-B-Y,” one of Carla’s greatest Stax sides. She was in fine voice, her delivery full of her trademark sweetness and wit. It was a luminous moment, with Carla, Jones and the band breaking out into beaming smiles throughout.
It was a dramatic moment, especially because Jones typically approached each song with a solemnity that seemed to exhort the audience to listen with care. And listen they did, the entire room rapt with adoration for the grooves and the moves that helped put Memphis on the map.
Opening the set were students from the Stax Music Academy, who did right by such classics as “Soul Man,” “Soul Girl,” “When a Man Loves a Woman,” and even Peter Gabriel’s Stax-influenced “Sledgehammer.” For those who slept on it, let it be known that Memphis Soul is alive and well and kicking.
Most Memphians associate Booker T. Jones with the M.G.’s, the house band for the glory years of Stax Records and instrumental hitmakers in their own right. But Jones’ several decades’ worth of hits as a producer and distinguished sideman after moving to California should not be lost in the shuffled beats of McLemore Avenue.
This quickly becomes apparent when reading his vivid and thoughtful autobiography, Time Is Tight: My Life Note by Note (Little, Brown, 2019), which opens not on the tracking room floor of a studio, but with the words “Acapulco Gold,” the smoke of a joint wafting around him during his first brush with an earthquake in Malibu. From there, Jones presents vignettes from all chapters of his life, skipping like a stone over the river of his years. And, of course, many ripples extend outward from Memphis.
Piper Ferguson
Booker T. Jones
Still living in California, Jones spoke with me about how he came to write the book, his approach to music, and how he still treasures lessons he learned in the Bluff City long ago.
Memphis Flyer: Was your new book quite a long time in the making?
Booker T. Jones: Yeah, it was much longer than I thought it would be. I didn’t start out to write a book. Ten or 12 years ago, I was just writing some essays about my life. It was almost like practicing songwriting. I was just practicing writing. And my wife said, “Why don’t you make that into a book?”
I had a number of accomplished authors offer to write or help me write it. But I read some autobiographies of some very close friends, and the problem was, all the events were accurate, and the facts were accurate, but the voice was just not their voice. So that’s why I decided I’d just like to, right or wrong, do it in my own voice.
Your voice certainly comes through in the very personal passages, such as when a teacher caught you cheating on a test and took you straight to your father’s classroom in the same school.
Yes, and in the book, there’s a photo of him in his white shirt and tie, standing by his blackboard. And that’s right where the woman marched me, right up there in the front of the room, right next to him. That’s where I had to stand in front of everybody.
Reading the book, one thing that strikes me is the importance of families to the Memphis scene. The Steinbergs, the Newborns, the Jacksons, and your own.
I’m glad you picked that up. It’s amazing, how there’re a lot of indications of that. It’s in the language. The use of words. And a lot of it is in the nice sense of community, of well-meaning activities for young people in Memphis that I took advantage of.
I’m curious about your approach to minimalism, your restraint, through so much of the Stax material. You never really tried to play like, say, a Jimmy Smith.
It was a convergence of attitudes, fortunately, for me, when I got to Stax. It was always underneath the surface, but it came out into the open with Al Jackson Jr., and Duck [Dunn] and Steve [Cropper] in particular, and also Jim Stewart. We actually talked about it. We didn’t use the term minimalism, but it was almost like, “Keep it simple, don’t play too much.” It’s almost like there’s a spiritual revelation or accomplishment in simplicity.
We’re really getting into it here, Alex, with this whole idea behind minimalism and music. I mentioned in the book that when I was playing the song “Time is Tight,” I hold that note, that one G, for so long in the melody, but that also gives me a chance to kind of emote and be emotional while that note is playing, you know, underneath it. And it’s such a simple melody.
You work the Leslie [tremolo speaker] beautifully on that simple melody as well.
Thank you. I’m really glad to hear you say that. I wanted this to be a book for musicians, to relate to and get into some of the concepts, and do exactly what you’re doing with it.
Yes, you even have some musical charts in the back.
The music that is printed in the book represents ideas of mine that go with the chapters, that I’m trying to emulate some of the feelings of those chapters. It’s not really music that’s been recorded. It’s just three or four bars of sentiment about that particular chapter, in music.
Courtesy of Stax Museum
Booker T. Jones
Speaking of the power of simplicity, I was fascinated to read that you were inspired by Bach when you composed “Green Onions.”
It’s just those three chords, the one, the minor three and the four, and the inversion on the right hand, where the little pinky finger starts on the tonic and goes down to the fifth and then the third. And it’s the repetition of it. I feel like the voicing I’m using is Bach’s piano voicing. And that’s what I was studying at the time. I was trying to figure out Bach’s reasoning for moving the notes the way he did when he wrote all his contrapuntal fugues and so forth. And repeating all that over and over in a kind of jazzy, bluesy, groove, there’s just something about the imposing that on blues. I don’t know how to say it. There’s something about that. It’s still one of my favorite records. It still kind of hypnotizes me.
You might be interested to know that there’s a crack band of Memphis players, the MD’s, who play only Booker T. & the MGs music. And they’ve just launched a project based on imagining “what if the MG’s interpreted the Beatles’ Revolver justas they did Abbey Road?” In fact, the band learned the entire MG’s album, McLemore Avenue, before they did it. It’s really something. They call the new album Revolve-Her.
I’d love to hear that. Revolve-Her! That’s reminiscent of Hip Hug-Her! Well, they are really into it.. Cool. That’s so great. Send me whatever information you can. If they worked on McLemore Avenue, that would give them a jumping off point for how to do that, how to have a better understanding of doing Beatles music in the spirit of Booker T. and the MGs.
Reading the book, I was impressed at how deeply you studied music theory even at Booker T. Washington High School, and then later at the University of Indiana at Bloomington. Was there a conflict between your love of minimalism and the formal studies of complex music theory and arranging you were doing at BTW and Bloomington?
It was impossible for it to be a conflict for me, because so early on I had this curiosity about the different instruments and their textures. So I was compelled to know what key the French horn is in. What an F-clef was. I had the music in my head, and that was what I wanted to write down. So I never did get the chance to choose to be a by-ear musician. I knew a lot of people who were, and I could have been a by-ear musician.
Although actually, I was a by-ear musician. And I think I fooled a lot of people, because I could hear music and I could play it just ‘cos I heard it. A lot of by-ear musicians do that; they can play symphonies or whatever, without actually knowing what the notes are. But the minute you get that desire to reproduce for a group like the Memphis Symphony…
Anyway, I still do by-ear sessions. I just did one a couple weeks ago. I don’t always write it down. I think I function both ways, now that you mention it. I never really thought about this before. A lot of players, you can just hum it to them, and you say, “Put a harmony to this,” and they know what you mean. And in some ways it’s faster.
You know, we did head arrangements at Stax. But those guys also read music. So sometimes I wrote stuff down for them, but most of the time, we worked with artists who just hummed the lines to us, or just did our own head arrangements.
Otis would dictate horn parts…
Oh yeah, he would jump around singing and shouting and humming.
Did he suggest organ parts that way?
No, usually horns. He had song ideas, and definite ideas about horns. He left the keys pretty much open to me and Isaac.
I was shocked to read that that’s Isaac Hayes playing organ on “Boot-Leg.”
I was shocked too! I drove 400 miles from Bloomington to Memphis, and Cropper says, “Hey Book, I want you to hear something.” He played “Boot-Leg” and I was so confused. I thought, well maybe that’s a Mar-Keys record, when I heard the Hammond organ. But I don’t tune the Hammond that way; I have different drawbar settings. Yeah.
Well, you were gracious about it.
Thank you. It’s great, it’s absolutely a great track. Great bassline. I love it.
Were there any other MGs tracks that didn’t include Booker T?
That was the only one, while it was Booker T and the MGs. It was the MG’s without me, I think Carson Whitsett played with Al and Duck and Steve after I left Memphis. But “Boot-Leg” was the only one. It was a great one though.
Booker T. Jones
People don’t talk about your piano playing much, but it seems that’s as much your instrument as the organ.
Yeah, I am first and foremost a pianist. I do Hanon scales maybe twice a week or more. That’s my go-to when I want to whip myself into shape. The first time that music evoked an emotion in me was hearing my mother play Debussy, Liszt, and Chopin on the piano. Very emotional stuff.
You write in the book that scoring the movie Uptight! was fulfilling a long held dream of yours, to compose soundtracks. But I gather you didn’t do many soundtracks after that.
No, that’s true. I had dreamt of going to Hollywood and scoring movies at some point. I think that’s one of the reasons I went to Indiana. Of course, when I got to Hollywood there were no African-American musicians scoring music. Henry Mancini was trying to bring people like Quincy Jones in and Quincy was really the only one that kind of broke through that. Of course he came right to see me when he heard I was doing the score and sent aides over to my sister’s house, to help me.
So there was a lack of opportunity for black directors and composers as well. I was really disappointed in Hollywood in that area. Uptight! was a Jules Dassin film. Jules was very talented. But because of his political leanings, he was not a Hollywood favorite. I think he was pretty lucky to get that deal with Paramount. But he actually got kicked out of Hollywood because he was married to Melina Mercouri, and she went on the Johnny Carson show and told the nation that Greece was about to be overrun by a junta. So that happened, and the next morning we were up and out of Hollywood, just like that. Just gone, out of Hollywood. So we went to Paris.
But yeah, scoring films was an ambition of mine. I guess I used to go to the theater on Mississippi Boulevard and that was a fantasy of mine.
It seems things have changed now enough to where you could have more opportunities now.
The industry has kind of moved on. It’s completely changed. But it’s a hard job to score a film. It’s a lot of work. I know quality musicians that have left the field because it was so crazy. André Previn was the first one. He was making millions of dollars composing music and he quit because it was just too much. The deadlines. You work with a director, and music has just such a big role in pictures, and it’s just so arbitrary, I’ll say that. You have to be so disciplined as a composer for film, because it’s all about the story. It’s all about what’s happening on screen.
You sometimes work with students at the Stax Music Academy on your return visits.
Yeah, so much talent there. I used Evvie McKinney on my recording of ‘”‘Cause I Love You.” She sounds so good on that song. She’s a Stax graduate, and I’m sure there’s gonna be collaborations with others from Stax in the future.
Time Is Tight: The Life and Times of Booker T. Jones
I just started a record company, that’s why I’m saying this. It’s called Edith Street Records. ‘”‘Cause I Love You” is the first release on Edith Street Records and it’s a companion to Note by Note album, which is a companion to the Time is Tight book.
What’s the rest of the new album like?
It’s a musical reproduction of my life. ‘”‘Cause I Love You” was the first song I ever played on at Stax. “Time is Tight” and some of those songs I recorded in Memphis are on there. And it kind of correlates with the chapters of the book. Each chapter has a musical song as its title.
You were relatively young when you moved out west. What does Memphis mean to you today?
Sometimes, when I’m preaching about how great it is to have come from Memphis and how lucky I was to have been born there, someone might say, “Well, I come from Cincinnati, and it’s great to be from there too!” But I do feel that Memphis is special, and I’m thankful that I grew up there and got my musical start there. And Time Is Tight is sort of a tribute to that, I think.
An Evening with Booker T. Jones, with Daily Memphian reporter Jared Boyd, takes place at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, 926 McLemore Ave., Friday, November 1st, at 7 p.m.; doors open at 6 p.m. A screening of an Aretha Franklin documentary takes place at 4:30. Free.
Whether it’s The Man in the High Castle or the upcoming For All Mankind, alternative histories are capturing something deep in our psyche right now. “If only a few things had been different, how might history have unfolded?” But the logic of such re-imaginings has thus far not been applied to music much — until now. Leave it to the MD’s, Memphis’ own combo featuring the music of Booker T. and the MG’s, to go there.
In a multimedia tour de force that the band has been honing for months, they’ll set out this Friday to imagine just what it might have sounded like if the Stax house band, who famously re-interpreted The Beatles’ Abbey Road on their album McLemore Avenue, had somehow given that treatment to Revolver four years earlier.
I spoke with MD’s bassist and arranger Landon Moore to get an inkling of what the audience might expect, and found it will be a lot more than I could have imagined.
Memphis Flyer: What was the genesis of this idea?
Landon Moore: I guess it started when we decided to do McLemore Avenue as a show. It was a fun record to learn, and it definitely gave us insight into how they approached arranging things: where they took liberties, how they chose to do the medleys, and songs they decided to leave off. For a long time the MD’s have wanted to do something ‘original.’ So we thought, you know, McLemore Avenue went over well, so let’s just do Revolver. And there really was a chance that Revolver could have been recorded in Memphis. It’s been documented: Brian Epstein was here in March 1st of 1966. He was staying out east and toured Stax with Steve Cropper and Jim Stewart.
So in covering Revolver, we’re essentially going to do it the same way McLemore Avenue was done. We took liberties, there’re medleys and stand-alones. But predicting what the MG’s would have done is difficult. When listening to the version of “Eleanor Rigby” that they actually did … Well, if I was asked to come up with something I thought they would have done, I never would have come up with that. I never would have thought of it. So we took everything that they were doing from 1966-68 and said, ‘Let’s pull rhythmic elements and tones from these songs, and let’s force this square peg of Beatles songs into this triangle that is Booker T. and the MG’s.’ What we got was something very interesting. We’d say, ‘This is the groove, this is the bass line, and you have to make this into “And Your Bird Can Sing.”‘ Then you’re left with, ‘Whoa! That’s interesting!’ I would study little sections where it’s just All Jackson, Jr. playing and say, ‘I’m going to force “Tic Tac Toe,” off the MG’s second record, to be “Tomorrow Never Knows.”‘
So there were a lot of surprises. What was the biggest?
The most interesting thing that came out of the whole process was, we didn’t want to just have it be music. So what we’ll have Friday is an interactive documentary about ‘what happened in Memphis when the Beatles recorded Revolver at Stax.’ It’s this Ken Burns-style documentary that follows Brian Epstein’s trip, which turns out to be very successful!
The Beatles actually come here for chunks of time, culminating at the end of July 1966, right before they’re about to release Revolver. It imagines what the Beatles did in Memphis, how they interacted with the MG’s. Why Booker T. and the MG’s, in 1966, decided to record Revolver, an instrumental version to be released on Stax. And how the biggest band in Memphis and the biggest band in the world both mingled and clashed. So we will be performing the role of Booker T. and the MGs, as they arrange this record. Which they decide to call Revolve-Her.
So that is what October 4th is all about. And of course, through it, we’ll be paying tribute to the band that we’ve been paying tribute to this entire time.
It sounds like you’ll be alternating between live performance segments and portions of this documentary.
Yes, it will be back and forth. There’ll be a segment up front that sets everything up. And the audience will be surprised at some of the photos featured, let’s just leave it at that. The Beatles are unaware that the MG’s are arranging a version of the record they are currently writing in Studio A of Stax. Booker T. and the MG’s are doing this in secret, in the back, in the demo studio at Stax, while the Beatles are recording. And there’s this whole elaborate plan that Cropper comes up with, of ways to get these chords. He’s essentially watching Lennon and Harrison’s hands, and then delivering that information to the demo studio. But then Al Jackson, Jr. books a secret show at Club Paradise, under the name the MD’s. John Lennon finds out about it, and makes someone take them to Club Paradise. And that’s where the first medley happens …
Just imagine this ‘letter from George Harrison’ about the Fabs recording at Stax in 1966
Hear the MD’s perform their interpretations of Revolver live, mixed with their faux-documentary, at the Kemmons Wilson Family Stage at Crosstown Theater, Friday, October 4th. Doors at 7:30 p.m., show at 8 p.m. $20
Score another one for the hometown team, as Memphis-related recordings are again added to the Library of Congress’ (LOC) National Recording Registry.
Since 2002, the institution has selected recordings — dating back over a century — that they deem worthy of special recognition and preservation. These recordings, according to the LOC website, showcase “the range and diversity of American recorded sound heritage in order to increase preservation awareness. The diversity of nominations received highlights the richness of the nation’s audio legacy and underscores the importance of assuring the long-term preservation of that legacy for future generations.”
While fifty per year were originally selected, that number dropped to 25 in 2006. Each year’s announcement indicates titles nominated in the previous year, making the recorded works announced today the selections for 2018. Selections may be entire LPs, archival field recordings, or singles
Memphis native Maurice White co-wrote one of the newly recognized songs, the smash single “September,” released by his band Earth, Wind & Fire in November of 1978. Another recognized single, Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man,” needs no introduction to Memphis music fans. Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” recorded at Memphis’ American Sound Studio in 1969, also was given a nod, as was “Memphis Blues” by W.C. Handy, as recorded by the Victor Military Band.
Tracks With Memphis Roots Added to National Recording Registry
Recordings with Memphis connections added to the registry in past years have included:
Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five Sessions (including Memphis native Lil’ Hardin Armstrong).
Elvis Presley’s Sun Recording Sessions
Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”
Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)”
Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ on”
B. B. King’s Live at the Regal
Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightnin'”
Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes”
Booker T & the MGs’ “Green Onions”
Love’s Forever Changes (led by Memphis native Arthur Lee)
Isaac Hayes’ Shaft
Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” (recorded at Stax, co-written by Steve Cropper).
Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together”
Many of the titles have accompanying essays explaining their history and significance. Memphis producer/engineer/musician Scott Bomar contributed the essay for “Green Onions.” The 2018 additions do not yet have essays posted.
Armed with an astute sense of what constituted “soul” and built on a sturdy foundation of blues, country, and jazz, Booker T. & The MGs presented gutbucket dance music that brought teenagers to their feet. But more unlikely pop-music saviors could hardly be imagined.
They were an integrated band from the Deep South at a time when such relationships could prove fatal, providing the gritty Soulsville backdrop for smash singles from both Stax and Atlantic Records. They eschewed the sophisticated sounds emanating from Detroit’s Motown label for fatback party numbers typified by finger-poppin’ instrumentals such as “Green Onions” and “Hip-Hug-Her.” And they conquered America and Europe without singing a single note.
When asked what it was like to be part of the core unit at Stax Records, organist Booker T. Jones pauses for a long beat, then admits, “I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it at the time.”
It shouldn’t sound too surprising. After all, the Memphis native wandered into Stax when he was just 14 years old. He couldn’t have imagined the immensity of his musical future: joining forces with drummer Al Jackson Jr., guitarist Steve Cropper, and first bassist Lewis Steinberg, followed by Donald “Duck” Dunn, to back dozens of soul acts, ranging from Rufus Thomas and Otis Redding to Wilson Pickett and Sam & Dave, appearing with Redding at the ’67 Monterey Pop Festival, and touring Europe as part of the astonishing Stax-Volt Revue. And Jones didn’t slow down much when Stax dissolved in the mid-’70s — producing Willie Nelson’s finest Atlantic-era work, reuniting with the MGs to back Bob Dylan and Neil Young, winning a shelf-full of Grammys, and getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“I was there at the beginning, so I kind of took it for granted,” Jones says. “It was a place to belong, a place I wanted to belong to before I got in, when I was hanging out and listening to records at the Satellite Record Store.” Courtesy of Stax Museum
Duck Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and Steve Cropper
“I’ve always described working at Stax like going to church every day,” says Cropper. “It was safe, and my energy level went up the minute I walked through the door. It was magic, although we didn’t know it at the time. We were just having fun.”
Fast-forward four decades to March 2007, when the MGs experienced that same thrill backing an all-star roster of Stax artists at Austin’s South By Southwest Music Festival (SXSW).
“When I was working with Willie Nelson, I used to come to Austin when there were just four clubs on Sixth Street,” says Jones. “Playing at Antone’s, where I used to hang out, was wonderful. My life is just getting full of moments like that.”
“We were back with Eddie [Floyd] and William [Bell]. I hadn’t been onstage with Isaac [Hayes] in years,” Cropper says. “I’d never done SXSW, but playing to a packed house, to people who knew our songs, was great. A lot of write-ups I saw later were overwhelmed by our performance, saying how good Eddie sounded and that William sounded like ‘a step back in time.’ It’s good to know we’re still capable!
“We’re able to adapt,” Cropper claims of the MGs’ ability to shift gears from a headlining instrumental group to agile backing musicians. “The way you have to address it is that Booker T. and the MGs are extremely highly trained session musicians. We could cover all the bases: If you wanted it to be jazz, it was jazz. If you wanted church, it was church. Even at Stax, there was a difference between the songs we did as the MGs and songs we did backing William Bell and Rufus Thomas.”
Courtesy of Stax Museum
Booker T. Jones
This adaptability has served the group well in the years since Stax disintegrated.
“Neil Young is incredible, just like Otis was incredible,” Dunn says. “They just play different styles. Neil’s a poet and he loves to rock, but he grew up on the same people I grew up on, singers like Jimmy Reed.
“It’s second nature,” Dunn says of the group’s onstage chemistry. “We’ve just been together for so long that what we really do is listen to each other. It’s spontaneous every time we play. We’ve got a certain tempo or a groove goin’ where anyone can venture off and go into something different. It’s fresh to us every night, and we never play it the same way twice.”
“I call it ad-libbing,” Cropper adds. “Duck and I have a little bit of a road map about where the changes are gonna go. In the old days, we just worked a song out then rolled the tape.”
The MGs have ad-libbed much of their career, after enduring numerous tragedies — including Redding’s death, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Jackson’s murder, and the bankruptcy of Stax — that would have felled other, lesser groups.
“We had a contract that wasn’t so great, but we were still a family — our routine was still the same,” Jones remembers of the beginning of the end, when Stax dissolved its distribution relationship with Atlantic Records (the deal cost Stax its back catalog of records that had been distributed by Atlantic) and briefly foundered before being purchased by Gulf & Western for $4.3 million in ’68. (Four years later, Stax would sign another deal, with CBS Records, that would ultimately sink the label in ’76.)
Courtesy of Stax Museum
Al Jackson and Steve Cropper
“The thing that happened at Stax was about the people and partly the place,” Jones says. “We all grew up within the history of blues and gospel down on Linden Avenue and Beale Street. We had the rockabilly and country roots of Cropper and Duck, and those combinations made the Memphis sound. You couldn’t re-create it anywhere else.
“But almost immediately, the studio was remodeled,” he recalls. “Offices were upgraded, and new people started coming in from New York and California. They built a new office right where Slim Jenkins’ joint used to be. It was a corporate environment, and they said we had to have three shifts, with the MGs working from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., the Bar-Kays working from 6 ’til 2 a.m., and another band coming in for that third shift. It reminded me of the steel mills.”
Even so, Dunn says, “Backing those guys and playing with Al made my life. I really didn’t have the answers ’til later on about exactly why it didn’t work out. Fortunately, we put it back together. I’m so glad we did.”
Invigorated by the SXSW experience, Jones says that he’s open to a discussion with the powers-that-be at Concord Music Group, which acquired the Stax name and the non-Atlantic portion of the catalog as part of its purchase of Fantasy Records two years ago.
“I see [the relaunch] as a positive thing, because the focus is on the music,” Jones says. “It could be a give-and-take thing that benefits both sides. Our music is getting played, and more people are becoming aware of it, like a revival or a resurgence of the Stax sound. The music always was our little gift to the world, and in return, we might get something else back from it. It’s a new life — 50 years is a long time.” Courtesy of Stax Museum
Duck Dunn
For Dunn, however, the jury is still out. “I don’t know yet. I got a little bit bigger check this month,” he says of the royalties he receives for playing on countless hit singles — rates that haven’t been reconfigured in decades. “They’re still paying us on a rate for an album that cost $3.98 retail. It’s not fair. I haven’t been happy with it, but what can I do?”
“It’s water under the bridge to me,” Jones says. “I’ve had my troubles, and I still have to work, but I’d be working no matter how much money I have anyways. But [Dunn] has every right to feel that way. This country has dropped the ball on royalty laws.”
Musing over this year’s 50th anniversary of Stax Records, a celebration co-sponsored by Concord, Soulsville, and the Memphis Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, Jones says, “When I was there, Memphis was pretty much unaware of Stax and what it was doing. A lot of the city enjoyed the music and appreciated it, but we didn’t get wholehearted city support. The city has a rich, rich heritage that people are just now seeing.
“I am impressed with the [Stax] Museum, and I’m sort of flattered by it. I’m proud that there’s a music school there, because that was one of my main obstacles as a kid. It’s a great opportunity for local children and a really good use of the land.”
“Any time the Stax Museum, the label, and its artists can get extra publicity, it’s a good thing,” Cropper says of the anniversary celebration, which will bring the MGs and other Stax veterans to the Orpheum Theatre in June and to the Hollywood Bowl and the Sweet Soul Music Festival in Porretta Terme, Italy, later this summer.
Asked whether or not he’d work with Concord, Dunn concedes, “I’d be willing to sit down and talk about it. Us doing a record of Stax music with other artists like, say, Carlos Santana, is something to think about.
“I love to play live. That’s the reason most musicians play,” he says. “It’s just fun seeing people liking what you do. The first thing you want to hear is yourself on the radio — then you know you’ve made it. The second big thing for me was the Stax-Volt European tour we did in ’67. Getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the first ballot was great. So was the [2007] Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.”
“It’s pretty special,” Cropper agrees. “You can win a Grammy for a song, but this kinda thing is gonna be around for a long time. This is proof that you can digitize the MGs, run our music through a meat grinder, but that energy’s gonna stay in there.”
Alex Greene 
Alex Greene 
Alex Greene 
Piper Ferguson 
Courtesy of Stax Museum 
Alex Greene 
Courtesy of Stax Museum 
Courtesy of Stax Museum 
Courtesy of Stax Museum 
Courtesy of Stax Museum