32. Booker T. & the M.G.'s - Green Onions (1962)

1. Green Onions*

2. Rinky Dink

3. I Got a Woman

4. Mo' Onions

5. Twist and Shout

6. Behave Yourself*

7. Stranger on the Shore

8. Lonely Avenue

9. One Who Really Loves You

10. You Can't Sit Down

11. A Woman, a Lover, a Friend

12. Comin' Home Baby*

B

Well this album is worth it for the title track alone. "Green Onions" is one of those songs everyone's heard and everyone loves. It must have sounded impossibly cool in 1962, and it still sounds amazing today. There's really not much to it, just a few simple riffs shuffled around a bit with Steve Cropper's snarling guitar playing short, sharp licks over the top of it. One thing that really strikes me about it is the rhythm section - "Green Onions" has a drum and bass part that sounds remarkably modern with its hard, tight groove. It's the sort of hard-edged, rock solid performance that would come to define the Stax sound in the 1960s.

The rest of the album is pretty good, too, even if it can't possibly live up to the first track. Tracks 2 through 4 are kind of cheesy and forgettable, though. The album doesn't really recover until the fizzy, high energy cover of "Twist and Shout". After that high point the music settles into a series of quieter, more soulful jams that really show off Booker T. Jones' incredible organ playing and the band's ability to lock into a groove. I may have been a bit hard on that Jimmy Smith album a while back, but truth be told I love the sound of the organ, and this album really shows its possibilities in a pop setting. 

So this is an impressive debut. When an album is built around a gimmick (in this case, the organ), there's always the risk it's just going to devolve into a novelty album. But the quality of musicianship here is incredibly impressive, and the song choices are mostly great. That said, I haven't much to say about it. This is obviously an important album - there are tracks here that sound like Curtis Mayfield, and others that clearly point the way towards the keyboard-driven funk of the Meters. And of course the M.G.'s were architects of the Stax sound. This is well worth hunting down, just don't expect the whole album to be as good as "Green Onions".