Booker T & The MGs - Soul Dressing (1965)

Booker T & The MGs were an American R&B instrumental group, best known for their work as the Stax Records house band during the 1960s.

After their surprise instrumental hit "Green Onions" in 1962, Booker T & The MGs found themselves kept busy as Stax Records began to take off. As the label's studio band, they backed R&B artists including Otis Redding, William Bell and both Carla and Rufus Thomas. They released several more instrumental singles of their own through 1963 and 1964, but none of them repeated the success of "Green Onions" - the highest charting was "Tic-Tac-Toe", which only got to #46 R&B. In 1965 a second album was put together, essentially a compilation of the singles released over the last two years with a few extra songs. All songs were band originals with one exception, a cover of Don Covay's "Mercy Mercy".

By the time of the album's release original bassist Lewis Steinberg had left, and he was replaced by Donald 'Duck' Dunn. Like the other members of the group, Dunn had performed and recorded a few years back as a member of The Mar-Keys, the original Stax house band from which the MGs had evolved. This gave them their best-known lineup of Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and Al Jackson, Jr., which would stick together for the next six years and witness the remarkable rise and fall of the Stax empire.

Green Onions (1962) <|> And Now! (1966)
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Booker T & The MGs - Green Onions (1962)

Booker T & The MGs were an American R&B instrumental group, best known for their work as the Stax Records house band during the 1960s.

The story of Booker T & The MGs can be traced back to the early, formative days of Stax Records, when the label and studio had yet to find its feet (it was then known as Satellite Records). Guitarist Steve Cropper was a member of The Mar-Keys, a Memphis high school band which came to record at Satellite in the early 60s (the group's sax player Packy Axton was the daughter of Estelle Axton and nephew of Jim Stewart, the brother-and-sister team who owned and ran the label), and gave them their first Top 10 hit with the instrumental single "Last Night" in 1961.

As the label and studio began to take off with the new Stax name and a distribution deal with the major Atlantic label, Steve Cropper became Jim Stewart's right hand man. A new, more professional studio group was put together from the ashes of The Mar-Keys, with drummer Al Jackson Jr., bassist Lewis Steinberg, and a young high school student by the name of Booker T. Jones. Jones was a talented multi-instrumentalist, but soon fell into the role of the group's keyboardist. Together they recorded the R&B instrumental "Green Onions", which became a surprise hit in 1962, charting at #1 R&B and #3 pop. A full album of instrumentals, featuring both originals and covers, was quickly recorded and put out under the Booker T & The MGs name. The album itself charted at #33.

Besides giving the fledgling Stax label a massive cross-over hit, the band and the song were important for other reasons. They were a racially integrated group, the importance of which in the R&B world of the early 60s cannot be underestimated. As they went on to become the Stax house band and play on almost all of the label's recordings for the rest of the decade, 1962 can be seen as the year that they laid the foundations for the unmistakable sound of Stax Records, which became synonymous with the 'Memphis Sound'.

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