#63: Booker T and the MG's - Green Onions (1962)

This is one of the first racially integrated rock groups. However, they are best known for their hit - Green Onion. They're an instrumental band that played hundreds of cover songs.

Comin' Home Baby
There are only twelve notes, you're bound to play the same ones sometime. I had to enlist my friend, Mike, to help me figure out who "stole" this lick from this song. The organ theme has the same voicings and feel as the song "I'm a Man" by the Spencer Davis Group. I'm sure it was unintentional, but then again it's not hidden, it's the overwhelming theme to both songs. I don't see anything else about it on the internet, but surely  I'm not the first person to hear it.



Green Onions

What a cool song, such a simple, cool bass line. It's one of the only instrumental track that I can say truly "rocks". It's been used in so many other forms of entertainment: American Graffiti, Happy Gilmore, and Get Shorty to name a few. Someone asked Booker T, "Why Green Onions?" Booker T replied, "Because that is the nastiest thing I can think of and it's something you throw away."

Behave Yourself
Another twelve bar blues filled with a whole lotta soul and a whole lotta blues. The organ again forces itself into the forefront only to be pushed aside for a sweet, succulent guitar. Oddly enough the song ends on a fade during one of the solos (this happens a few times throughout the record).

All in all, it was interesting. While I do not see myself listening again any time soon - Green Onions is still pretty boss. I can recognize that this music is very good, it just fails to get me going.

Tomorrow's album: Elizabeth and the Catapult's Taller Children.