Green Onions

Performer: Booker T. & the MG's
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Booker T. & The MG's: Booker T. Jones (organ); Steve Cropper (guitar); Lewis Steinberg (bass); Al Jackson, Jr. (drums). Recorded in Memphis, Tennessee in June & August 1962. Includes liner notes by Bob Altshuler. Released in 1962, the first full-length album by Booker T. & the MG's, GREEN ONIONS, revolves around the classic, slow-burning, organ-led instrumental title track. It's impossible to overstate the importance and impact of this, the band's biggest chart hit, which oozes smokey cool as Steve Cropper's strangled guitar cries and Booker T.'s terse keyboard bursts criss-cross over a framework that prefigures everything from funk to dub. Al Jackson and Lewis Steinberg keep the rhythm firmly in the pocket here and on covers such as "I Got a Woman" and the chill, down-tempo blues of Acker Bilk's "Stranger on the Shore." Together, the MG's (short for Memphis Group) developed a collective groove that would prove crucial to the development of '60s soul.

Q (3/95, p.121) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...Tight, smokey and studiously economical, much of this 1962 debut is as sharp as 'Green Onions' itself....These tunes still sound smart, sharp and swinging."

Booker T. & the MG's, led by soul organist Booker T. Jones, were the house band for much of the music that came out of Memphis in the 1960s on the Stax label. Their instrumental releases--typified by their minimalist classic "Green Onions"-- were the very definition of soulful economy, supple chops and laidback funk--truly regal stuff.

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