Stax Records Week (pt 6)
The Architects:
"Stax Profiles" - Booker T. & The M.G.'s
As our Stax tribute week plows on, it becomes even more conspicuous that Stax was a label full of legends, soul masters and trend setters. The most cursory trip through the Stax catalogue yields the usual characters: Otis Redding, Albert King, Wilson Pickett... you can probably fill in the rest. And the thing that bound these artists together, bundled them up into an identity and place in history under the banner of Stax, was the sound of the recordings themselves. Yeah, the signature Stax sound, the one that hangs in our collective pop-music unconscious, that gritty, powerful and triumphantly soulful sound, the crafters of which happened to be one legendary group: Booker T. & The M.G.'s.
As Stax's energetic session band (bass player Donald Dunn reminisces that they were "recording almost a hit a day for a while there") and a chart-climbing musical force on their own terms, Booker T. & The M.G.'s were like the soil nourishing and supporting all the Stax artists when the label was white-hot and its vocal artists were in full bloom. And not only were they perhaps one of the greatest backing bands of all time, beyond all consideration of the group as an enormously influential musical act, the talents of each individual member added up to much more than the sum of its parts. They were also songwriters and producers, and given their combined contributions to the label, I'm inclined to think that the players known as Booker T. & The M.G.'s were indeed the most integral part of Stax. Read on, and I think you'll agree.
The band nestled themselves deep inside Stax from almost the very beginning and stayed as its sonic foundation until the label's late '60s changes. Their beginnings began innocently enough: they were all in the studio to back up Sun star Billy Lee Riley, had some downtime and started riffing. Jim Stewart, then president of Stax, liked what he heard and recorded the jam. The resulting song was dubbed "Green Onions," and after some dispute about whether it should be an A-side or a B-side, it was released as a single and quickly rocketed to #3 on the Pop charts and #1 on the R&B charts. Thus Booker T. & The M.G.'s (named "the M.G.'s" after the now-defunct British car manufacturer) were born.
Along their collective path, every member of the group had an important and necessary contribution, both to the band's sound and to Stax itself. Booker T. Jones himself was only sixteen when he played saxophone on the Rufus and Carla Thomas track "Cause I Love You," Stax's first hit, released when the label was still under the moniker Satellite. Beyond his keyboard and organ skills, he was also a strong songwriter, and cowrote plenty of Stax hits, perhaps most notably Albert King?Äôs "Born Under a Bad Sign." Meanwhile, Steve Cropper, the M.G.'s guitarist and a legend in his own right (Mojo Magazine rated him the #2 guitarist of all time in 1996, right behind Hendrix), also had a lot of weight at the label. He cowrote classics like "Knock on Wood," "In the Midnight Hour," "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," and others every man, woman, and child in the English-speaking world has heard at some point in their lives. He also served as an A&R man, and had an important role at the boards, being one of the head producers at the label and turning out more Stax singles and LPs than anyone's had the patience to catalogue. Al Jackson (Jr.), the man behind the kit, laid down the locomotion. As compiler Elvis Costello writes, he was the "perfect motor of so many Stax sides."And we shouldn't forget Donald Dunn, the man on bass who replaced original bassist Lewie Steinberg after the group's second LP, and whose flexible grooves and self-taught style filled out so many great tunes.
As with the rest of the albums in the Stax Profiles series, all the cuts here are selected by somebody you'd expect to know their stuff; this time around, the ever-affable Elvis Costello is our compiler. "Any fan of this marvelous combo," he writes, "is going to have a sequence in which their favorite tracks might play on an imaginary jukebox." Costello's jukebox is stuffed with all the eclectic and overlooked stuff you'd expect him to dig: with selections like two live tracks from a 1965 concert unissued until the early '90s to a track off the band's Abbey Road cover album McLemore Avenue, Costello's got us deep in his realm of taste. Just don't expect this disc to have all the hits and essential material, because as the jukebox metaphor shows, the album reflects more of Costello's eccentricities than a general consensus about the group's work: a good chunk of what's on display here are rare cuts and B-Sides that the average Joe will only be able to find on Stax's three-disc Booker T. box set
or the group's lesser known LPs. That's not to say that all of this compilation is obscure; plenty of recognizable material is here, from the group's biggest hit, "Time is Tight" to "Green Onions" (in a live version) to "Hip Hug-Her." Luckily, in either case Costello's liner notes are as thick and descriptive as you'd expect from the walking musical encyclopedia he is: the sonic stuff Stax records are made out of are, after all, a large portion of what Costello's buttered his bread with throughout his career. He starts the mix off with the mellow organ hum of "Time is Tight," and from then on goes through several workouts and cool-downs, ending with lesser-known tune "Fuquawi."
The band's initial breakup occurred in 1971; Booker T. Jones, who'd had enough with the way he was being treated, left the company. Soon after, Steve Cropper left in protest of the company's change in business practices. Jackson and Dunn, still loyal to the company, tried to reform the M.G.'s, but the ensuing album was a flop; they eventually reestablished connections with Jones and Cropper, and the group decided to reform and start fresh. However, in late 1975, the great and still fiercely respected Al Jackson was fatally shot in his home by a burglar. Just as Otis Redding's death had drawn the line of Stax's before and after and crossed it, Jackson's death was the end of Stax for good. A few months after his death, Stax filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors forever. But Booker T. & The M.G.'s still live on: with Anton Fig replacing Al Jackson, the group has played behind Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and other artists. After all this time, the three original members of the band are still jamming away. Booker T. Jones continues playing music but also went on to a career as a producer, including such classics as Willie Nelson's Stardust album. Dunn and Cropper both play in the Blues Brothers band that they've been associated with since the late '70s, and Cropper is still banging away on the Telecaster and cutting albums.
I haven't even mentioned the specifics of their music much; I haven't talked about why they're such icons, and respected and venerated as musicians. There are so many reasons, approaches, innovations and technique from each player as to why that's true, and why all these parts fit together to build an instrumental group that topped the charts in a sexy and soulfully unheard of way. So when you celebrate Stax, take a minute and think about Booker T. & The M.G.'s. When you're listening to Stax records, listen real close to the music going on: chances are that somewhere back there, Booker T. & The M.G.'s are playing their hearts out, tirelessly carving out that R&B paragon: the musical essence of Stax.
In celebration of the recently-released Stax Profiles series, the Modern Pea Pod is hosting Stax Records Week. In the following days, we'll cover discs by Otis Redding, Rance Allen, Johnnie Taylor, and the Staple Singers, all of them specially compiled by noted musical figures from Elvis Costello to Steve Cropper. Watch this page for updates!
Chosen as a Blogcritics Editors' Pick for May 17-23, 2006
Official Site: Booker T. Jones
Official Site: Steve Cropper
History of Rock: Booker T. & The M.G.'s
Buy Stax Profiles: Booker T. & The M.G.'s on Amazon
See Also: MG enthusiasts of a slightly different sort
"Stax Profiles" - Booker T. & The M.G.'s
As our Stax tribute week plows on, it becomes even more conspicuous that Stax was a label full of legends, soul masters and trend setters. The most cursory trip through the Stax catalogue yields the usual characters: Otis Redding, Albert King, Wilson Pickett... you can probably fill in the rest. And the thing that bound these artists together, bundled them up into an identity and place in history under the banner of Stax, was the sound of the recordings themselves. Yeah, the signature Stax sound, the one that hangs in our collective pop-music unconscious, that gritty, powerful and triumphantly soulful sound, the crafters of which happened to be one legendary group: Booker T. & The M.G.'s.As Stax's energetic session band (bass player Donald Dunn reminisces that they were "recording almost a hit a day for a while there") and a chart-climbing musical force on their own terms, Booker T. & The M.G.'s were like the soil nourishing and supporting all the Stax artists when the label was white-hot and its vocal artists were in full bloom. And not only were they perhaps one of the greatest backing bands of all time, beyond all consideration of the group as an enormously influential musical act, the talents of each individual member added up to much more than the sum of its parts. They were also songwriters and producers, and given their combined contributions to the label, I'm inclined to think that the players known as Booker T. & The M.G.'s were indeed the most integral part of Stax. Read on, and I think you'll agree.
The band nestled themselves deep inside Stax from almost the very beginning and stayed as its sonic foundation until the label's late '60s changes. Their beginnings began innocently enough: they were all in the studio to back up Sun star Billy Lee Riley, had some downtime and started riffing. Jim Stewart, then president of Stax, liked what he heard and recorded the jam. The resulting song was dubbed "Green Onions," and after some dispute about whether it should be an A-side or a B-side, it was released as a single and quickly rocketed to #3 on the Pop charts and #1 on the R&B charts. Thus Booker T. & The M.G.'s (named "the M.G.'s" after the now-defunct British car manufacturer) were born.
Along their collective path, every member of the group had an important and necessary contribution, both to the band's sound and to Stax itself. Booker T. Jones himself was only sixteen when he played saxophone on the Rufus and Carla Thomas track "Cause I Love You," Stax's first hit, released when the label was still under the moniker Satellite. Beyond his keyboard and organ skills, he was also a strong songwriter, and cowrote plenty of Stax hits, perhaps most notably Albert King?Äôs "Born Under a Bad Sign." Meanwhile, Steve Cropper, the M.G.'s guitarist and a legend in his own right (Mojo Magazine rated him the #2 guitarist of all time in 1996, right behind Hendrix), also had a lot of weight at the label. He cowrote classics like "Knock on Wood," "In the Midnight Hour," "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," and others every man, woman, and child in the English-speaking world has heard at some point in their lives. He also served as an A&R man, and had an important role at the boards, being one of the head producers at the label and turning out more Stax singles and LPs than anyone's had the patience to catalogue. Al Jackson (Jr.), the man behind the kit, laid down the locomotion. As compiler Elvis Costello writes, he was the "perfect motor of so many Stax sides."And we shouldn't forget Donald Dunn, the man on bass who replaced original bassist Lewie Steinberg after the group's second LP, and whose flexible grooves and self-taught style filled out so many great tunes.
As with the rest of the albums in the Stax Profiles series, all the cuts here are selected by somebody you'd expect to know their stuff; this time around, the ever-affable Elvis Costello is our compiler. "Any fan of this marvelous combo," he writes, "is going to have a sequence in which their favorite tracks might play on an imaginary jukebox." Costello's jukebox is stuffed with all the eclectic and overlooked stuff you'd expect him to dig: with selections like two live tracks from a 1965 concert unissued until the early '90s to a track off the band's Abbey Road cover album McLemore Avenue, Costello's got us deep in his realm of taste. Just don't expect this disc to have all the hits and essential material, because as the jukebox metaphor shows, the album reflects more of Costello's eccentricities than a general consensus about the group's work: a good chunk of what's on display here are rare cuts and B-Sides that the average Joe will only be able to find on Stax's three-disc Booker T. box set or the group's lesser known LPs. That's not to say that all of this compilation is obscure; plenty of recognizable material is here, from the group's biggest hit, "Time is Tight" to "Green Onions" (in a live version) to "Hip Hug-Her." Luckily, in either case Costello's liner notes are as thick and descriptive as you'd expect from the walking musical encyclopedia he is: the sonic stuff Stax records are made out of are, after all, a large portion of what Costello's buttered his bread with throughout his career. He starts the mix off with the mellow organ hum of "Time is Tight," and from then on goes through several workouts and cool-downs, ending with lesser-known tune "Fuquawi."The band's initial breakup occurred in 1971; Booker T. Jones, who'd had enough with the way he was being treated, left the company. Soon after, Steve Cropper left in protest of the company's change in business practices. Jackson and Dunn, still loyal to the company, tried to reform the M.G.'s, but the ensuing album was a flop; they eventually reestablished connections with Jones and Cropper, and the group decided to reform and start fresh. However, in late 1975, the great and still fiercely respected Al Jackson was fatally shot in his home by a burglar. Just as Otis Redding's death had drawn the line of Stax's before and after and crossed it, Jackson's death was the end of Stax for good. A few months after his death, Stax filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors forever. But Booker T. & The M.G.'s still live on: with Anton Fig replacing Al Jackson, the group has played behind Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and other artists. After all this time, the three original members of the band are still jamming away. Booker T. Jones continues playing music but also went on to a career as a producer, including such classics as Willie Nelson's Stardust album. Dunn and Cropper both play in the Blues Brothers band that they've been associated with since the late '70s, and Cropper is still banging away on the Telecaster and cutting albums.
I haven't even mentioned the specifics of their music much; I haven't talked about why they're such icons, and respected and venerated as musicians. There are so many reasons, approaches, innovations and technique from each player as to why that's true, and why all these parts fit together to build an instrumental group that topped the charts in a sexy and soulfully unheard of way. So when you celebrate Stax, take a minute and think about Booker T. & The M.G.'s. When you're listening to Stax records, listen real close to the music going on: chances are that somewhere back there, Booker T. & The M.G.'s are playing their hearts out, tirelessly carving out that R&B paragon: the musical essence of Stax.
In celebration of the recently-released Stax Profiles series, the Modern Pea Pod is hosting Stax Records Week. In the following days, we'll cover discs by Otis Redding, Rance Allen, Johnnie Taylor, and the Staple Singers, all of them specially compiled by noted musical figures from Elvis Costello to Steve Cropper. Watch this page for updates!
Chosen as a Blogcritics Editors' Pick for May 17-23, 2006
Official Site: Booker T. Jones
Official Site: Steve Cropper
History of Rock: Booker T. & The M.G.'s
Buy Stax Profiles: Booker T. & The M.G.'s
on AmazonSee Also: MG enthusiasts of a slightly different sort
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