The song "Green Onions" is perhaps the scourge of baseball fans across the country, but for as much as that damn keyboard line has infected stadiums over the last 45 years, there's a lot more going on with this record.The most recognizable songs are obviously the title track and the two most obvious covers, "Twist and Shout" and "I Got a Woman," the latter if which was so sped up and altered that I barely recognized it.
Apart from "Green Onions," the lineup of organist Booker T. Jones, guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist Lewis Steinberg, and drummer Al Jackson, Jr. is most famous for being the house band for Stax Records, playing on records by the likes of the Staples Singers, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, and Otis Redding.
But while that's a full slate of Sixties legends, the sound the band put out could easily pass for a slightly funked-up version of the musical beds used by groups like the Drifters. And as an instrumental band, it's easy to hope for a soaring Ben E. King vocal to come in on something like "Behave Yourself."
For as much attention gets paid to the high-speed instrumental workouts, I found the most compelling tracks on the record to be the slower jams, songs like "Stranger on the Shore" and "Lonely Avenue," which tone down on the in-your-face virtuosity and focus on subtlety and feel. It's surprising an instrumental band can be so expressive, but I guess that's more of a bias from sticking primarily to vocal music for most of my life.
So while I plan on skipping the song "Green Onions" every time it comes up on shuffle, there's a lot of life and skill on this record that's worth getting a grasp on.
"Green Onions"
Otis Redding performing "Shake" at the Monterey Pop Festival with the M.G.s as his backing band
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