This is an instrumental with a simple but unusual
2/4 time signature.
Booker T. & the MG's were the house band for the
Memphis Soul music label
Stax Records. They recorded with many of the Stax artists, including
Wilson Pickett,
Otis Redding, and
Isaac Hayes, but they also recorded their own material between sessions.
The band developed this song while they were waiting for rockabilly singer
Billy Lee Riley (a Sun artist) to show up for a session. In an interview with
National Public Radio (
NPR),
Booker T. Jones said: "That happened as something of an accident. We used the time to record a
Blues which we called '
Behave Yourself,' and I played it on a
Hammond M3 organ.
Jim Stewart, the owner, was the engineer and he really liked it and wanted to put it out as a record. We all agreed on that and Jim told us that we needed something to record as a
B-side, since we couldn't have a one-sided record. One of the tunes I had been playing on piano we tried on the
Hammond organ so that the record would have organ on both sides and that turned out to be '
Green Onions.'"
As the guys were calling it a night after recording this song, Jim Stewart asked them to listen to what he'd recorded on one particular take. They listened but weren't as impressed as Jim, who asked: "If we released this
as a record, what would you want to call it?" "Green Onions," was Booker T. Jones' reply. "Why 'Green Onions'" Jim asked. Booker T: "Because that is the nastiest thing I can think of and it's something you throw away."
The group's guitarist
Steve Cropper brought this song to the
Memphis radio station
WLOK the day after they recorded it. The morning DJ, Rueben
Washington, was a friend of Cropper's, and put the song on his turntable to hear off-air. After listening to just part of the song, he cut off the record that was on air and started playing "Green Onions" for his listeners. Says Cropper: "He played it four or five times in a row. We were dancing around the control room and believe it or not, the phone lines lit up. I guess we had the whole town dancing that morning."
The response to the song proved Cropper's
point that it should be the
A-side of the single instead of "Behave Yourself," and subsequent
singles were pressed with the sides flipped.
The group was named after the
British MG sports cars, but when the company expressed disapproval, they claimed the initials as "
Memphis Group." Members of the band were Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper,
Al Jackson, and
Lewie Steinberg (who was replaced in 1964 by
Donald "Duck" Dunn).
Jackson was killed in
1975, but the remaining members have gotten together often to play various events, including the "
Bobfest"
Bob Dylan tribute concert in
1992, and
Neil Young's
1993 tour. The band was integrated, which was unusual at the time in Memphis: Three members were black, and one was white (Cropper). When
Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in Memphis in
1968, igniting already high racial tensions, they had two white and two black members.
The sound is driven by the
Hammond Organ played by Booker T. Jones, who was 17 when this was recorded. The Hammond organ was invented in 1934 by
Laurens Hammond. Its mournful sound made it the instrument of choice for military chapels, but then in the
1960s the rockers got wind of it and the device became a standard keyboard instrument for jazz, blues, rock and gospel music
.
In the UK, this was popular in dance clubs, but didn't become a chart hit until
1979, when it was used in the movie
Quadrophenia. A character played by
Sting danced to it in the movie
- published: 30 Apr 2016
- views: 19