Booker T. & The MGs appreciation

[Eric D.]

You'd be hard pressed to find a backing band as tight and diverse as these guys. The houseband for Stax records performed on over 600 releases...They were the Stax sound providing the sounds for great songs like:

Sitting on the Dock of the Bay
Soul Man
Who's Making Love
I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)
Try a Little Tenderness
Hold On, I'm Comin'
just to name a few......

not to mention one of the best singles of all time "Green Onions" (Booker T. Jones was seventeen years old when this song was released)

great albums, too :

Green Onions
Soul Dressing
Hip Hug-Her
Soul Limbo

they also did a pretty damn cool album cover of Abbey Road

praise to Booker T. & the MGs:
Al Jackson, Jr., Booker T. Jones, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Steve Cropper

[Matthew E]

My favourite Booker T and the MGs song is their cover of the theme from "Hang 'Em High".

Was it John Fogerty who called them the greatest band of all time?

I've got a book at home called The Book of Rock Lists, which is what it sounds like: a book of fun lists about this or that aspect of rock music. One set of lists is "Greatest Guitarists", "Greatest Drummers," et cetera. There were only three bands, as I recall, to have all their instrumentalists appear on their appropriate lists: the Who, Led Zeppelin, and Booker T and the MGs. Not proof of anything beyond one guy's opinion, of course, but suggestive.

[howyadoin]

That's great stuff. Have you heard the new Booker T album, by the way?

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/01/16/booker-t-recruits-neil-young-drive-by-truckers-for-first-solo-album-in-20-years/

[Slackjaws_ate_my_brain]

Booker T also had a cameo on the latest Rancid record ("Let the Dominoes Fall")

[FanboyStranger]

Let's not overlook their contribution to the Blues Brothers. The orphanage would have been closed if not for the help of Steve 'The Colonel' Cropper and Donald 'Duck' Dunn.

[Eric D.]

That's great stuff. Have you heard the new Booker T album, by the way?

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/01/16/booker-t-recruits-neil-young-drive-by-truckers-for-first-solo-album-in-20-years/

I had no idea, - that's awesome - and his backing band DBT is a really good band, I guess you could say they are one of my personal favorites. (Patterson Hood, singer/songwriter/guitarist is son of Muscle Shoals Studio session player, the great David Hood)

[Eric D.]

Booker T also had a cameo on the latest Rancid record ("Let the Dominoes Fall")

I'm gonna check that out.

[Slackjaws_ate_my_brain]

Here's the video for Rancid's "Up to No Good" :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSQJE5AGpRg