“Green Onions” (Booker T. & the M.G.’s)

This week we’re going all organic, featuring tunes with prominent organ parts. Our first classic organic song of the week is the instrumental track “Green Onions,” made famous by Memphis’ own, Booker T. & the M.G.’s. This one hit #3 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100 charts, and rose to the very top of Billboard’s Hot R&B Sides chart.

“Green Onions” was based on a twelve-bar riff that organist Booker T. Jones came up with the year before, when he was just seventeen. The entire group built on that lick to create the track you know, hence all four members (Booker T. on organ, Steve Cropper on guitar, Lewie Steinberg on bass, and Al Jackson Jr. on drums) received songwriting credit. It was initially released as the B-side of the “Behave Yourself” single in July of 1962, but due to popular demand was reissued as an A-side the following month.

Here’s how Booker remembers it:

“So I started playing another bluesy riff I had. This was how ‘Green Onions’ began. That band—Al Jackson on drums, Lewie Steinberg on bass, Steve Cropper on guitar—was a once-in-a-lifetime unit. We clicked because of our devotion to simplicity. The bassline was basic 12-bar blues. Al was a human metronome on the drums. Lewie called this doodling jam “Funky Onions,” but [Stax owner] Jim [Stewart]’s sister said: ‘We can’t use that word.’ To laced-up, deep-south conservative America, it sounded like a cuss word. So we retitled it ‘Green Onions.'”

The track is classic Memphis soul. Jones plays a snarky organ lead, Cropper switches from choppy rhythm guitar to biting lead lines, Steinberg holds down the fort with a walking bass line, and Jackson plays simple but in-the-pocket quarter notes on his ride cymbal. It is both tight and laid back and cooks and cooks and cooks all day long.

Jones, Cropper, Steinberg, and Jackson were the house band for Stax Records in Memphis. They played on literally hundreds of recordings for artists like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Johnnie Taylor, Albert King, and others. Steinberg left the group in 1965, replaced by Donald “Duck” Dunn. They continued in that configuration until Al Jackson’s murder in 1975; he was replaced by a rotating cadre of drummers.

Over the years the M.G.’s had a number of hits and established a unique, organ-based Memphis soul sound. Their most well-known tracks include “Hip Hug-Her” (1967), a cover of the Rascals’ “Groovin’” (1967), “Soul Limbo” (1968), “Hang ‘Em High” (1968), and “Time is Tight” (1969). Booker’s Hammond B3 organ was prominently featured on all of them—although he played a Hammond M3 on “Green Onions” and other early recordings.

The group got its name from the MG sports car, although they could never admit that. Here’s how Steve Cropper remembers it:

“Someone at Stax had an MG motor car, so we called ourselves Booker T and the MGs. When the British car firm’s lawyers told us to desist, we told them it stood for Memphis Group. We all had to swear to secrecy that we’d never talk about the car again. Years later, we were being interviewed and someone asked: ‘What does MG actually stand for?’ Duck Dunn said: ‘Musical geniuses!’ Booker and I looked at each other. I think we wanted to kill Duck, because we’d never say that about ourselves. But at least they got an answer to their question.”

I had the pleasure of catching Booker T. and the M.G.’s twice at Minneapolis’ Dakota Jazz Club, and they blew the roof off the joint both times. That was before Duck Dunn passed away in 2012; Jones and Cropper have toured and recorded separately since then.

And here’s today’s bonus video of the day, a real treat: A half-hour recording from the Stax/Volt Tour in 1967, featuring the mesmerizing Otis Redding performing “Shake,” “My Girl,” “Satisfaction,” and a burning version of “Try a Little Tenderness;” Sam and Dave doing “When Something is Wrong with My Baby” and “Hold On I’m Coming;” and Booker T. and the M.G.s doing a simmering version of “Green Onions.” The boys back up all the other acts, accompanied by the Memphis Horns. It is hot, hot, hot, a sweaty, high energy soul review that only the guys from Memphis could do. It’s worth watching the whole thing—and this live version of “Green Onions” (with Duck Dunn on bass) will have you up and dancing. It’s something else.