April 21 street date. The word legend tends to get tossed around liberally nowadays (we're as guilty of it as anyone on these sales sheets!). But this time, we have a new album from a TRUE LEGEND. Booker T. is known as a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, record producer, and arranger, and is best known for fronting Booker T. & The MG's - also known as the house band at STAX Records. His keyboards have graced the recordings of many, many soul greats. Now he is back with his first solo album in decades. He teamed with southern rockers DRIVE BY-TRUCKERS (who backed up BETTYE LaVETTE on her last album) to produce an album that is raw and edgy, fun and innovative. And just to seal the deal, long-time Booker associate NEIL YOUNG dropped by to play blistering lead guitar on nine of the ten tracks. Produced by Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Beck, Rickie Lee Jones, Foo Fighters) and Booker T.
Please note new street date: August 14. Orange vinyl pressing of this late 2019 release. In an emotional musical journey, Booker T explores new takes on the songs that make up the fabric of his musical identity. Largely mirroring the chapter titles from his forthcoming memoir "Time Is Tight", "Note By Note" serves as a musical companion. Stax staples like "Cause I Love You" and "These Arms Of Mine" are woven into defining musical moments from Booker's journey after Stax, when he produced and recorded with artists as diverse as Willie Nelson and Carlos Santana. Booker T & The MG's fans will enjoy a new ending to the song "Time Is Tight", a Romanesque coda that has been played live yet never recorded. The album culminates with new original music, highlighting the soaring guitar and vocals of Booker's son and collaborator Teddy Jones. Booker T is a 4 time Grammy Award winner (including the Lifetime Achievement Award), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, and arguably the most famous Hammond B3 player in history.
Please note new street date: August 14. In an emotional musical journey, Booker T explores new takes on the songs that make up the fabric of his musical identity. Largely mirroring the chapter titles from his forthcoming memoir "Time Is Tight", "Note By Note" serves as a musical companion. Stax staples like "Cause I Love You" and "These Arms Of Mine" are woven into defining musical moments from Booker's journey after Stax, when he produced and recorded with artists as diverse as Willie Nelson and Carlos Santana. Booker T & The MG's fans will enjoy a new ending to the song "Time Is Tight", a Romanesque coda that has been played live yet never recorded. The album culminates with new original music, highlighting the soaring guitar and vocals of Booker's son and collaborator Teddy Jones. Booker T is a 4 time Grammy Award winner (including the Lifetime Achievement Award), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, and arguably the most famous Hammond B3 player in history.
Dec. 21 street date. Stax reissue of this 1970 album by the legendary R&B combo, also known as the house band of the Stax label. This 'Abbey Road' tribute features four tracks - three medleys and "Something".
Finally available for Canada! With the exception of their second LP 'Soul Dressing', BOOKER T & THE MG's albums were (indeed, are) predominantly composed of cover material. During their years at Stax, the group acted as session house band for innumerable stars, including everyone from southern soul giant Otis Redding to blues legend Albert King. They played almost continuously, often tacking short sessions of their own on to star sessions that had either finished early or started late. Some of the material found its way on to their own many albums, but much of it was put on the shelf and forgotten about in their hectic recording schedules. When MG's guitarist Steve Cropper heard a tape of this collection of 25 previously unissued tracks he said: "I'm shocked that some of these didn't get released. I think we just forgot them. I think they were just back on the shelf and nobody took the time (to ever listen to them again). Man I could have used these things, I guarantee you. There was a time when we needed a record and Booker wouldn't record, we could have put this out. We had the rights to the stuff. That would have been a perfect album!". Cropper's assessment is spot on and Stax, instrumental, and just plain Booker T & The MGs fans are in for a real treat. A beautiful slice of 1960s soul history, finally brought back to life.
The impossibly tight house band for the Stax/Volt labels, Booker T & The MGs helped define, almost more than any other single factor, the spare, economical and groove-heavy sound of Memphis soul music. Backing legends including Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett and countless others, they performed on over 600 classic recordings. As an instrumental recording unit in their own right, Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Al Jackson, Lewis Steinberg, and later, Duck Dunn, sliced through now legendary hits including Green Onions, Time Is Tight, Hang ‘Em High and Hip-Hug Her. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, they are a cornerstone of American music, and this 2-disc, 30-cut compilation is Memphis soul personified.
January 14 street date. Limited Edition - 180 gram Audiophile Remaster - There's not a note or a nuance out of place anywhere on this record, which featured 35 of the most exciting minutes of instrumental music in any category that one could purchase in 1962 (and it's no slouch multiple decades out, either). "I Got a Woman" is the single best indicator of how superb this record is and this band was -- listening to this track, it's easy to forget that the song ever had lyrics or ever needed them, Booker T. Jones' organ and Steve Cropper's guitar serving as more-than-adequate substitutes for any singer. Their version of "Twist and Shout" is every bit as satisfying. Even "Mo' Onions," an effort to repeat the success of "Green Onions," doesn't repeat anything from the earlier track except the tempo, and Jones and Cropper both come up with fresh sounds within the same framework. "Behave Yourself" is a beautifully wrought piece of organ-based blues that gives Jones a chance to show off some surprisingly nimble-fingered playing, while "Stranger on the Shore" is transformed into a piece of prime soul music in the group's hands. Just when it seems like the album has turned in all of the surprises in repertory that it could reasonably deliver, it ends with "Comin' Home Baby," a killer jazz piece on which Steve Cropper gets to shine, his guitar suddenly animated around Jones' playing, his quietly trilled notes at the crescendo some of the most elegant guitar heard on an R&B record up to that time.
February 26 street date The house band at Memphis' legendary Stax Records, Booker T & The MG's played on some of the most legendary and unforgettable soul recordings in history. Released originally in 1962, Green Onions' title track is arguably the most recognizable piece of instrumental pop and soul ever to be released, an absolute stone classic of a jam, with Booker T's organ at the fore. In addition to being a classic group, Booker T & The MG's were one of the first soul and rock groups to have both white and black members, and understandably their music is often affiliated with the civil rights movement that was going on all around them in the American south of the 1960s. Essential American originals from Booker T & The MG's.
June 18 street date. Featured over these two CDs is the first flowering of the ‘Stax’ sound, a sound that would develop throughout the ‘60s to become one of the most predominant sounds of American R&B and soul around the world. Included are three complete albums, two from The Mar-Keys and one from Booker T & The MGs plus bonus singles. These were the first acts to break on Stax Records with hits like, 'Last Night' and 'Green Onions'. Here then are three of the earliest albums released out of Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton’s legendary label and the genesis of one of the most important house bands in recording history. Fully detailed liner notes with career achievements and history.
May 10 street date. The Road from Memphis starts with a young Booker T. Jones hauling his stack of newspapers to Phineas Newborn’s front yard where, while folding them for his after-school delivery route, he could listen to the jazz great practice piano. It ends with Booker and The Roots roaring through a set of both timeless and contemporary originals (and propulsive covers of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and Lauren Hill’s “Everything Is Everything”). Along for the ride are vocalists Matt Berninger of the National, Yim Yames of My Morning Jacket, Sharon Jones, Lou Reed, and Booker himself, telling the story of how the funk/soul sound that Booker helped invent spiraled out from Memphis, touching The Root’s hometown of Philadelphia, New York (where engineer Gabe Roth has been recreating classic soul sonics for everyone from Sharon Jones to Amy Winehouse), and Detroit. Detroit as in Dennis Coffey, legendary Motown session guitarist who introduced driving rock-funk rhythm to hits like “Cloud Nine” and “Ball of Confusion” by the Temptations, and brings his Detroit grit to these tracks. The Road from Memphis is classic Memphis soul, and classic Booker in the tradition of “Green Onions,” but beyond that it is the story of a sound, and how Booker, working with the inheritors of his sound, is keeping a tradition alive.
May 10 street date. The Road from Memphis starts with a young Booker T. Jones hauling his stack of newspapers to Phineas Newborn’s front yard where, while folding them for his after-school delivery route, he could listen to the jazz great practice piano. It ends with Booker and The Roots roaring through a set of both timeless and contemporary originals (and propulsive covers of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and Lauren Hill’s “Everything Is Everything”). Along for the ride are vocalists Matt Berninger of the National, Yim Yames of My Morning Jacket, Sharon Jones, Lou Reed, and Booker himself, telling the story of how the funk/soul sound that Booker helped invent spiraled out from Memphis, touching The Root’s hometown of Philadelphia, New York (where engineer Gabe Roth has been recreating classic soul sonics for everyone from Sharon Jones to Amy Winehouse), and Detroit. Detroit as in Dennis Coffey, legendary Motown session guitarist who introduced driving rock-funk rhythm to hits like “Cloud Nine” and “Ball of Confusion” by the Temptations, and brings his Detroit grit to these tracks. The Road from Memphis is classic Memphis soul, and classic Booker in the tradition of “Green Onions,” but beyond that it is the story of a sound, and how Booker, working with the inheritors of his sound, is keeping a tradition alive.
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