If Booker T. and the MGs’ signature hit “Green Onions” always felt like a loose-limbed good time among musical friends, that’s because it actually was. The band, who’d only recently completed its line up with the addition of a hot-shot young keyboardist named Booker T. Jones, was fooling around in Memphis’ Stax Studio when the song emerged out of off-the-cuff jam.
In fact, guitarist Steve Cropper says, the session wasn’t even earmarked for Booker T. and the MGs. Instead, it was a demo session for Billy Lee Riley, a rockabilly star best known for “Rock With Me Baby” and “Red Hot” who was considering a switch to Stax. “He didn’t show up for the session and we were just jamming around on some blues stuff,” Steve Cropper tells Bronson Herrmuth. “What we didn’t know was that [Stax Records owner] Jim [Stewart] was already ready to do the session. He liked what he was hearing, and he just reached over and pushed the record button.”
When they were done, Stewart called Booker T. and the MGs in to hear the playback. “We go, ‘What? You recorded that?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, come listen to it,'” Cropper remembers. “So, we’re listening to it back and we’re going, ‘You know, that ain’t bad.’ Jim said, ‘Well, look guys, if we decide to put this out on a record, you got anything we can put on the B side?’ We looked dumbfounded. We didn’t really know he was serious.”
He was. It was then that Steve Cropper remembered a riff Booker T. Jones had played for him recently, something for an unrecorded vocal that had stuck with the guitarist. The MGs’ ageless smash “Green Onions” was born, right then.
“So, we went down to the studio and started playing this riff and goofing around with it, and came up with a little format — you know, two verses and a solo, whatever — and I was doing this thing for a solo in the middle,” Cropper remembers. “Jim suggested, ‘Why don’t you put that on the intro, and then just do a regular solo on the middle?’ and we went, ‘OK.’ That was the take, and one or two takes later we had ‘Green Onions,’ which has been a monster for a long time.”
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