Each week, American Routes Shortcuts offers a sneak peek into the upcoming program. Today, host Nick Spitzer sits down with soul legend Booker T Jones to talk about writing instrumental hits, growing up in Memphis and how he got his start with Stax Records.
NS: What is it that leads you to get into the studio and actually start working with performers at Stax?
BTJ: Luck. Just Plain Luck. I had stood there at that counter pretending to listen to records but I was really listening to the music coming out of the studio and knowing that they had a recording studio back there and I couldn’t get in there. When I finally was able to walk through that curtain with my horn, I was just ready.
NS: Well now tell me about moving from being curious about music and playing in the clubs to finding yourself at the key studio musician and involved with all these great performers and ultimately your own band.
BTJ: It happened slowly. I became the resident piano player at Stax and then sort of the resident organ player when Isaac became involved.
NS: Isaac Hayes
BTJ: Yeah, Isaac Hayes. And, it just slowly evolved into a group of people who ended up being there when all these great people started coming through.
NS: Green Onions starts out as a B Side?
BTJ: Yeah, it was. It was just something to enable us to put the record out because we had recorded Behave Yourself and everybody decided that was a great blues, and you know why wanted to try to make a record of it so we needed to have a B Side. And that’s how Green Onions came about.
BTJ: Ruben Washington I think at WLOK in Memphis just flipped it over on a whim and then he liked it and I guess people started calling in. So Cropper decided to go and have another master made and flipped it over.
NS: Even after Green Onions becomes a big hit, you decide to go off to college and study music, Indiana University, you become a Hooser- a Hoosier, let me get it right.
BTJ: Yeah, that’s right. The plan was always graduate Booker Washington High School and then go to some good music school. So it was a matter of whether I was going to veer from that plan or not. The record was the aberration – the unexpected part.
NS: What did going to England do to your consciousness at that point?
BTJ: Well, it was a big surprise to me to know that they had made such an effort to know our music and that they were so familiar with it.
NS: You moved to California eventually, and worked on so many amazing pieces of music. Why did you move to California?
BTJ: I started to appreciate a different type of music and I started to have different types of musical ambitions that I wasn’t able to realize in Memphis because of my association with Stax. But in California, I could. In California I was able to work with pop and jazz and country and it was ok.
To hear more, join host Nick Spitzer Saturdays at 7 or Sundays at 6 on WWNO or listen at AmericanRoutes.org.