Booker T. & the M.G.’s

TrackSingle / Album
Green OnionsStax S-127
Behave YourselfStax S-127
Aw' MercyStax S-131
Chinese CheckersStax S-137
Soul DressingStax S-153
Can't Be StillStax S-161
Night Owl WalkSoul Dressing
Soul LimboStax STA-0001
Day TripperPlay The Hip Hits
When Something Is Wrong With My BabyPlay The Hip Hits


Booker T. & the M.G.’s (l to r): Booker T. Jones (organ), Donald “Duck” Dunn (bass), Steve Cropper (guitar), Al Jackson Jr. (drums)

 

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Booker T playlist

 

Contributor: Dave Stephens

A Hammond organ surged as Resnick handed over his money, stepped inside. Thick with bodies, the room swam with the scent of sweat and tobacco and the possibilities of sex. The sweet odour of dope which he willed himself not to recognise. On the stage a seven piece band was playing “Green Onions”. In those days, they were always playing “Green Onions”.

That’s from page 5 of John Harvey’s novel, “Wasted Years”. It is set in Nottingham with the bulk of the action taking place in 1992 though Chapter 1, from which these words come, takes Inspector Resnick back to 1969 when he was but a lowly PC. Quite why The Boat in Nottingham was still stuck in an R&B groove, when much of the rest of the UK had managed to get flower-powered well before ’69, isn’t explained but I suspect it’s based on personal experience.

My second quote takes us back further, back even to before the official release of Green Onions in the UK. Here’s an extract from the writings of Toppermost contributor, Paul F. Newman:

I was stopped dead in my tracks when I first heard Green Onions on a foreign radio station in 1962 a few weeks before it was officially released on the London label in Britain. I gathered it was called Green Onions from the fast speaking French announcer but the name of the artist was impossible to catch – not surprisingly if you’d never encountered it before, “Booker T. & the M.G.’s” is something you’d need to see written down to make any sense of.

It was that guitar in the middle wailing like a cat that was like nothing I’d previously heard, and its contrast to the deep electric organ carving out the basic 12-bar blues made the whole record one of the most fantastic instrumentals I’d ever heard. In the following week when anyone asked me at school what was my favourite record, I smugly said “Green Onions”, knowing they would never have heard of it. Later, when it was famous, I imagined I’d had a brief moment of glory – among those who remembered – as the first person in my vicinity who’d raved about it.

I purchased the single as soon as it was available in Britain and found myself playing the flip side Behave Yourself almost as much as the A-side. I would later learn that Behave Yourself, almost a solo electric organ piece by Booker T, was the intended A-side with Green Onions planned for the reverse.

The guitarist on Green Onions was Steve Cropper – a name to be recognised on the combined writing credits of many a future great soul single, like Knock On Wood, In The Midnight Hour, (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay … There’s a lot of things I would later learn, like it was Cropper who provided the link to the Mar-Keys, another name used by the Stax house band and whose first recording Last Night slightly preceded Green Onions. Last Night was one of my favourite instrumentals back in 1961.

I wish I had Paul’s power of recall. I can’t remember when I first heard “Onions” but I also bought it and all the following singles and EPs up to some time in ’66; that’s up to My Sweet Potato. After that the psych bug got me firmly in its grasp. But it wasn’t a complete goodbye to Booker & the boys (see later).

What I do remember from the period was that one of the music journals – it might even have been the august Blues Unlimited – held a readers’ poll for “best R&B record” and Green Onions got the #1 rating followed by Sonny Boy Williamson’s Help Me which famously used the same bass/organ riff but came out later. Since that time, reminders of “Onions” have been frequent; hardly a month seems to go by without it popping up as a backing track to a Southern USA road trip or something along those lines.

And it was a fluke. We didn’t learn that immediately but information has trickled out over the years most recently via interviews from the surviving participants. The players – then session men, comprising Booker T. Jones, organ (still only 17 years old), Steve Cropper, guitar, Lewie Steinberg, bass and Al Jackson Jr. on drums – were hanging about on a late spring Sunday afternoon in 1962 in the Stax Studio in Memphis, waiting for the arrival of Sun rockabilly man Billy Lee Riley, in order to cut some demos with him. According to Cropper, “Billy either forgot the date, or was hungover from Saturday night” (source: “Uncut” feature on the band by Nick Hasted dated 10th November 2017). To kill time they started playing an unnamed slow blues that they’d been using as filler on club dates. It was a kind of late night thing, mainly featuring Booker but with a couple of single note descending cascades from Cropper which always seemed to catch you by surprise. Stax co-founder Jim Stewart was in the production booth and, unknown to the boys, had set the tapes rolling. He liked what he heard and told them he’d happily put it out as a single. That was Behave Yourself. This left them with a problem: what to put on the flip?

Booker came up with a riff which, according to him, he’d been playing for years on piano at home. On this occasion though, the Hammond M3 organ was already miked so he switched to that. Lewie Steinberg deepened the sound by playing the riff in unison and Cropper waited his time and then came in with some simply stunning incendiary slashes of electricity. Jim Stewart loved it. According to Lewie Steinberg: “Well we worked on “Green Onions”, maybe once or twice. Then we cut it one time. All your records at that time had to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2 minutes and 45 seconds. It came out perfect.” (source: “Uncut” feature – see above). According to Steve Cropper, the whole thing took no more than twenty minutes.

It was called Green Onions because Al Jackson is reported to have said “it stinks like green onions” and there was some suggestion of using Funky Onions as a title. That got vetoed because, believe it or not, the word ‘funky’ wasn’t approved of back then.

The following day, Steve Cropper took the master tapes to Sam Phillips’ Sun Recording Studio at 639 Madison Avenue (the second Phillips studio after 706 Union Avenue) where Scotty Moore cut the acetates. Scotty was later awarded with a Gold Record for this work. Green Onions was originally issued on Stax subsidiary, Volt Records, in May 1962. There are differing views as to whether Behave Yourself or Green Onions was the original A-side. Certainly, it was the latter that the DJs played. And it was definitely “Onions” on the A-side for the July release on Stax itself.

The record hit the #3 spot in the Billboard Hot 100 in the week ending 29th September 1962. It didn’t hit the UK Chart until it was rereleased after being featured in the film Quadrophenia, whereupon it peaked at #7 in January 1980.

Subsequent early to mid sixties singles met with very limited success. Indeed I’ve seen some referred to as “failed single sides recorded between 1962 and 1964” and “just minimal meandering on blues changes” (source: Wilson & Alroy’s Record Reviews) but I would strongly differ. The second half of the decade was more rewarding for the boys with Time Is Tight (featured in the 1968 film Uptight) hitting the Top Ten in both the US and the UK, and Soul Limbo, which also saw release in ’68, getting used as the theme for the BBC’s “Test Match Special” in the UK.

In addition to the singles – and there were a few albums along the way – Booker and the boys had a day job. They were the key part of the Stax house band and appeared on literally hundreds of singles – I’ve actually seen the figure of 600 quoted – from all the Stax greats. They were supplemented by others including keyboards (and later vocals) man Isaac Hayes, and on horns, ex-Mar-Keys, Floyd Newman, Andrew Love and Wayne Jackson. The last named pair later got themselves christened as the Memphis Horns.

There were some personnel changes over time. In ’64, Lewie Steinberg left and was replaced by Donald “Duck” Dunn. Like his early friend, Steve Cropper, Dunn started out in a band called the Royal Spades which turned into the Mar-Keys. During the mid sixties, Booker spent considerable chunks of time studying music at Indiana University and his place at the keyboards was sometimes taken by Isaac Hayes. However this was primarily for session work though, according to Wiki, he did appear on one Booker T. & the M.G.’s single, Boot-Leg. The last change was permanent. Al Jackson was murdered by an intruder under somewhat mysterious circumstances in 1975 (for more info see the Wiki feature on Al).

Booker left Stax in 1970 while recording the album Melting Pot. The band split at that juncture but came together in various combinations and at various times in later years. Most notably they formed the house band in 1992 for Bob Dylan’s “30th Anniversary Concert”, with Jim Keltner on the drums stool. As an offshoot from that, they backed Neil Young on his 1993 world tour. In 1992, they were inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

 

THE SINGLES

In the light of the boys’ almost total lack of experience at “the hit making thing”, it was probably inevitable that the first clutch of singles post “Onions” would have a broadly similar sound – mid tempo and riff driven, with an aggressive feel, Jones usually taking the initial lead and Cropper crashing in round about the minute mark. The “songs” – if you can call these 12 bar efforts songs – were almost invariably written by the complete band or occasionally just Jones; I counted only two serious exceptions to this rule prior to Christmas ’66’s Jingle Bells. Contrary to some of the critics I’m very partial to this portion of the oeuvre and would regard the period up to roughly mid ’66 as their pomp. I fondly imagine the guys settling down to some jamming and coming up with these goodies after rather more structured sessions with the likes of Otis, Sam & Dave, Wilson and so on.

I’ve selected Aw’ Mercy, the flip of the immediate follow-up to “Onions”, as the archetypal early track. While it doesn’t differ dramatically from any of the numbers on singles 2 or 3, or the flip of the 4th, it does have one of the more outrageous Cropper breaks with wrenched notes arriving from highly unusual spots on the fretboard. Where Steve got some of his ideas from I have no idea. He usually credits Lowman Pauling of the 5 Royales as a big influence and, indeed, was responsible for a multi artist tribute album to the Royales in 2011, Dedicated: A Salute To The 5 Royales (see the No Depression 2011 interview with Cropper on the subject).

Single #4, Chinese Checkers, was the first real break from the “Onions” formula. Booker noodles away nicely on electric piano this time throwing in some vaguely oriental combinations egged on by vocal exhortations. We also get some horns suggesting that the boys had essayed a real arrangement for a change, though in reality I suspect that the guys on sax happened to be there from an earlier session and just did what came naturally. Mr Jones was back on Hammond for Soul Dressing which, at least for the first few bars, had a jazzier feel. The rhythm is laid back and latinate and the riff is that descending one from Hit The Road Jack with Steinberg and a very delicate Cropper taking it in unison. All such delicacy, though, goes out the window on Steve’s break which takes place at roughly the usual time but is one of his most explosive.

I’ve one final track from the early period, Can’t Be Still (and I’ve always suspected the title owed something to the Phil Upchurch Combo’s You Can’t Sit Down which Booker and the boys included on their first album). What always gets me on this one is the kind of ripple effect created by the interplay between organ and guitar.

The single that got record buyers interested again was their cover of the (Young) Rascals’ Groovin’ in ’67. The version was pitched somewhere between funk and easy listening which might sound like a put down but you had to admit that they didn’t half do it well. The disc almost made the US Top Twenty and, barring the almost obligatory Christmas offering, was the start of a run of singles through to early ’69, all of which did rather nicely in hit parade terms. In sequence these were Soul Limbo, Hang ’Em High and Time Is Tight. With the exception of the first in this grouping, I can’t get wildly enthusiastic about these records though I could well be in a minority. But while Soul Limbo might have been little more than a variation on the La Bamba / Twist and Shout / Louie Louie theme, complete with latin icing, it managed to sound both fresh and infectious, though a love of cricket might have helped its sales in the UK over the years.

 

 

THE ALBUMS

Like a number of other R&B outfits, Booker T. & the M.G.’s weren’t really an albums band. Or at least they weren’t in their early years. For proof just take a listen to their first LP. The sleeve design was eye-catching and imaginative for the period; what was inside was less so. The aggression and raunch of that debut single was largely conspicuous by its absence. Both sides of the disc were there as was one of the follow-ups, Mo’ Onions, but elsewhere what we got were covers of recently popular instrumentals and soul numbers. Don’t get me wrong. None of these interpretations was bad. They were just too polite and tasteful, not lived-in. Included were numbers like Ray Charles’ I Got A Woman and Lonely Avenue plus Mel Tormé’s Comin’ Home Baby. On the first the boys’ effort pales against the Jimmy McGriff version of the song in which the grunt and sweat come through strongly, while neither of the second and third are able to match the mood and urgency, respectively, of the originals. I suspect this LP was put together too quickly in a perhaps understandable rush to cash in on the sales of the single.

The second album, Soul Dressing, was almost the polar opposite. 10 of the 12 tracks were from singles, all with names like Jones, Cropper, Steinberg, Dunn and Jackson appearing in the composer credits. Of the two others, one was a cover of Don Covay’s Mercy Mercy (which the Stones also covered on their third UK album). That was OK but the other was more interesting. Night Owl Walk, penned by the group, was a deliberate step into jazz territory. Yes, it was a medium tempo 12 bar affair but coming from much cooler climes than usual. This was Jimmy Smith land or maybe the area owned by one of his neighbours like Groove Holmes or John Patton. Cropper put his Kenny Burrell hat on and, my, did it fit him well. There might have been an element of “we can do this just like switching a light on” or maybe not.

They didn’t do it that often. Doin’ Our Thing, the title track of their ’68 album, was one of very few others that featured the jazz organ blues styling.

The boys’ third album, And Now!, reverted more to the approach of the first LP and set the pattern for many following: the odd single track or two, a few originals from the band and plenty of covers but with the difference that the net for the latter was cast more widely. Hence And Now! included their take on Summertime, plus an excellent party piece in Jericho with the two principals evidently enjoying the fast harmony chunks of the song, plus Sentimental Journey. It’s a shame that the last named isn’t on YouTube. Its opening, apart the occasional swoosh from Booker’s Hammond, is redolent of the thirties or forties with a clip clop rhythm thing going on. Ultra polite and charming at the same time. But in the second run through of the verse they switch to almost a pastiche of their down ‘n’ dirty style. Further verses see further changes though none so well realised as the first.

As a whole though the album was something of a curate’s egg; good bits but often swimming in a sea of polish and politeness. It was the last LP I bought back then though I’ve sampled later ones and those comments aren’t too far off the mark.

Probably the best known of Booker and the boys’ albums is McLemore Avenue which was a tribute to Abbey Road, with McLemore Avenue being the road on which the Stax studio was located. They took the medley approach used by the Beatles on much of the second side of the album and used it across three long medley pieces leaving only one number, George’s Something on its own (though I should add that the 2011 rerelease added six other Beatles covers including two versions of You Can’t Do That). Once again I have to confess to a lack of enthusiasm for the set but I’m certainly not the best person to pontificate since Abbey Road doesn’t rate at all highly in my favourites list of Beatles’ albums. My problem is illustrated by their take on Something which features oodles of vaguely pretty stuff aiming for the isn’t-that-elegant market until Cropper kicks in round about the minute mark. Gradually, he dispenses with the cuteness and by about two minutes in we’re into a blues/funk jam with the rest of the boys piling in.

I made the comment, “It was the last LP I bought at the time” but I was tempted back into the M.G.’s world by (Booker T. and the M.G.’s) Play The Hip Hits in 1995. My rationale for the purchase was that (a) the material was all covers but covers from records from Chess, Motown, Excello etc., (b) it all came from early Stax sessions, but with the exception of one track had not seen release, and (c) that the CD had been compiled by those blues and R&B loving people at Ace Records UK. The “Hip Hits” in the title did yield the occasional surprise though. Who’d have thought Petula Clark’s Downtown would emerge as such a gem! And who would have guessed Day Tripper could sound so ominous. The riff is, unsurprisingly, given prominence but only appears sparingly as if to emphasise its importance; they chuck in a new descending one as well. My last selection is the number that closes this album, Sam & Dave’s slowie When Something Is Wrong With My Baby. In my Amazon review of the set I commented as follows on the track:

“A beautiful intro from Cropper with a less electric, almost an acoustic sound. Then it’s Booker stating the melody with just the bass backing initially, then, Cropper is back. They alternate. Cropper produces one of those great little twiddles, Booker brings out both the churchy and the blues feel on this fabulous version. And I’m a lover of the original as well. This may be equal. I still have great memories of Sam and Dave performing a towering version in Bristol during the ’67 Stax tour. Starting at the back on each side of the stage, and gradually building, swapping lines, pleading to the heavens. I also can’t forget a well satisfied punter bellowing “God Save Steve Cropper” as we filed out at the end.”

 

 

FOOTNOTES

1. Booker Taliaferro Jones Jr. was born on 12th November 1944 in Memphis, Tennessee. He was something of a child prodigy musically, playing sax, oboe, trombone, bass and piano at school plus organ at church. His recording debut came via Satellite, later Stax Records, and the record Cause I Love You from Rufus And Carla (Rufus Thomas and daughter Carla) in 1960. Booker played baritone sax. The session that produced Green Onions, which he co-wrote, took place while Booker was still in school. Over the mid sixties period he studied classical music composition in Indiana University returning to work as a Stax session musician with the M.G.’s at weekends.

2. Last Night was covered in the UK in 1961 by David Ede (and the Go Man Go Men) on Pye. Its main distinguishing point being a sexy female voice purring “Last Night!” in the breaks rather than the less inspiring voice of a Memphis studio session man. (I’m grateful to Paul for that note – there was also a later (1966) cover from Georgie Fame)

3. I’ve hardly mentioned Messrs Jackson and Steinberg in this document. Which is totally unfair. The pair were one of the greatest rhythm sections in the business. Quite apart from their work with the M.G.’s take a listen to some of those early Stax singles from Otis and Rufus etc. That was Al and Lewie providing the bedrock. They were older than Booker and Steve with hard won experience in the clubs and record studios of Memphis. Al Jackson had worked as the session drummer at Sun Records for a spell and also worked with the band led by the great Willie Mitchell, later to be the musical mastermind at Hi Records. The oldest member of the group, Lewie Steinberg had been an in-demand bass player since the fifties and, as a consequence, was one of the earliest to get ‘signed up’ as a regular member of the Stax house band.

4. For many years it was assumed that ‘M.G.’s’ stood for Memphis Group, regardless of the ‘’s’. This, indeed, is what Stax publicity led us to believe. However, relatively recent interviews have stated the MG did stand for the British sports car but the Memphis Group story was put about to avoid claims of trademark infringement. Record producer and musician Chips Moman is one of those who have confirmed the MG version. Not only was he the one who owned said car but he’d also worked in an earlier group named the Triumphs using the same source for group name.

5. Wikipedia does have an alternative explanation for the source of the Green Onions title. I quote: “According to Cropper, the title is not a marijuana reference; rather, the track is named after the Green Badger’s cat, Green Onions, whose way of walking inspired the riff”. However, they do go on to attribute a quote to Booker ref. nastiest/stinkyest thing, broadly similar to the one I used in the main text. By the way, you get 10 points if you can tell me more about the Green Badger and its cat!

6. Every reader will be aware of the Stax Records label since they are virtually a household name. Fewer people will be aware of events that followed the sale of Atlantic Records to Warner Brothers in 1967. Prior to this date Atlantic had handled US national distribution for Stax under an agreement signed in 1961. A knock-on effect of the Atlantic/Warner move was the triggering of a clause that Jim Stewart of Stax had overlooked when he signed the original contract, which gave Atlantic the rights to all material released by Stax to date. Not only that, Sam & Dave returned to Atlantic from which company they had been unofficially ‘borrowed’. The death of Otis Redding in December of 1967 also robbed the company of their biggest money earner. These were some of the factors which were to cause Stax major financial problems towards the end of the decade.

7. A little known fact about Steve Cropper is that he co-wrote the A-side of the fifth single from Bill “Raunchy” Justis, Flea Circus. Steve was 16 at the time.

8. In 1965, Booker and the M.G.’s did a bit of moonlighting from Stax. Three of the group took part in an informal jam session with a gent called Magnificent Montague on congas in L.A. The session got recorded and was released as Hole In The Wall by the Packers on the Pure Soul label. Although Wiki doesn’t say, it’s my understanding that it was ex-Mar-Key Charles “Packy” Axton on sax.

9. In commenting on the Play The Hip Hits album I made no mention of the boys’ splendid version of You Are My Sunshine. I have a theory that it’s a song that brings out the best in artists. Other good versions include the one from Duane Eddy (on which I commented in my Toppermost on Duane) and Gene Vincent (on which I didn’t).

10. Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn were recruited to be part of the backing band for the 1978 The Blues Brothers film which led to further work for the pair.

11. I didn’t know until getting into this essay that John Lennon used to refer to himself and Booker T. and the M.G.’s as Dr. Winston and Booker Table and the Maitre d’s. Or at least that’s how they were credited on his instrumental Beef Jerky.

12. In case anyone’s not aware of him I should include a strong plug for crime writer John Harvey. Easily as good as the better known Ian Rankin, Harvey’s longest series features an inspector Charlie Resnick based in Nottingham. Resnick is a strong liker of jazz and has a number of cats named after some of the jazz greats. Harvey also has a shorter series featuring retired detective Frank Elder. And he’s written poetry and stand alone novels, and has worked on radio and TV scripts. He’s a Notts County football fan.

 

Stax poster

 

Booker T. Jones official website

Steve Cropper – ‘Play It Steve’: The Official Website

Donald “Duck” Dunn Remembered (1941–2012)

Lewie Steinberg (1933–2016)

Al Jackson Jr. (1935–1975)

Booker T. & the M.G.’s discography

‘Green Onions’ – The Greatest Single of All Time (Pop Matters)

Booker T. & the M.G.’s biography (Apple Music)

Dave Stephens is the author of two books on popular music. His first, “RocknRoll”, is described by one reviewer as “probably the most useful single source of information on 50s & 60s music I’ve come across”. Dave followed this up with “London Rocks” in 2016, an analysis of the early years of the London (American) record label in the UK. You can follow him on Twitter @DangerousDaveXX

TopperPost #692

10 Comments

  1. Paul F. Newman
    Jan 22, 2018

    Fantastic piece. Thank you Dave. So the MGs were a sports car after all. I’ve learnt more about Booker T and the MGs in the last fifteen minutes than in the past fifty years.

    • Dave Stephens
      Jan 22, 2018

      Many thanks Paul. Your contribution fitted well I thought. I’d already stumbled over the John Harvey quote which was partially what persuaded me to give Booker the Topper treatment but the more subjective content the better, as far as I’m concerned, so long as it’s expressed well.

  2. Glenn Smith
    Jan 23, 2018

    Two cinematic moments: the Blues Brothers band riffing on Time is Tight while Cab Calloway does the soul revue intro to Jake and Elwood and Sting in Quadrophenia as the ace face, gliding onto the dance floor with Green Onions pumping out, brilliant. Dylan picked them as his backing band for his 30 years on Columbia Records gig in 1992. Another footnote on their ubiquity, they played in Sydney about 6 years ago supporting a guy called Guy Sebastian. My wife saw them at a pub in Balmain which holds about 200 people, and, as she gleefully reported, they were superb. Having said all that, great essay and list Dave, but I would have snuck in Time is Tight.

    • David Lewis
      Jan 30, 2018

      I saw Cropper and Dunn with the Blues Brothers around 1991. Wilson Pickett and Eddie Floyd were vocals. Cropper is a superb guitarist. And Duck helped invent the bass.

  3. Andrew Shields
    Jan 23, 2018

    Dave, thanks for this superbly researched and brilliantly evocative piece. And what a fine group of musicians they were.

    • Dave Stephens
      Jan 25, 2018

      Thanks guys. I should have guessed there’d be a Time Is Tight supporter.

  4. John Chamberlain
    Jan 26, 2018

    Paul, I’m wondering whether the fast talking DJ on the French station was Président Rosko, or Emperor Rosko as he was known in the UK when on Caroline. I listened to him on the LW in those days but I’m not sure if the dates would tie up. He was a very fast speaker “Minimum de blabla, maximum de musique”. He was the son of Joe Pasternak the film producer. Here is a clip from when Rosko was on RTL.

    • Paul F. Newman
      Jan 29, 2018

      John, I remember Emperor Rosko broadcasting in English of course but all I remember about my first hearing of Green Onions was that it was some person speaking in French – way too fast for ears schooled in schoolboy French to pick up. Neither have I a clue what foreign station this might have been broadcast from. I was merely twiddling the dial, probably waiting for Radio Luxembourg to start, and suddenly stopped on this amazing soul sound.

  5. Peter Viney
    Jan 28, 2018

    Great stuff. I’d rate their finest recording as Otis Redding “Live in Europe” which might be anybody’s finest live recording ever … but after Green Onions, it can only be Time Is Tight, which I’d rate as their best single … it also gives its title to their 4CD box set. Steve Cropper did it live when I saw him with The Animals, with Micky Gallagher reproducing the organ part so well, that Steve Cropper commented at the end “He plays it like it ought to be played”. Significantly, Green Onions and Time is Tight are the two Steve Cropper always plays, so in familiarity they rank with Soul Limbo. Then two tracks I’d go for are A & B sides: Boot-leg and Outrage (from Soul Dressing). Boot-leg is famous, as you note, in that Isaac Hayes plays keyboards, not Booker T who had exams that weekend. Outrage, the B-side, was a number that old friends The Palmer-James Group did for years. I’d have to have Hang ‘em High and Soul Clap 69. I’ve been playing “Time Is Tight” box CDs this afternoon. It would be easy to choose another ten.

  6. Peter Viney
    Feb 26, 2018

    I picked up good vinyl copies of Soul Limbo and the Uptight soundtrack recently. The former has a couple of candidates … Born Under A Bad Sign and a surprising version of Jimi Hendrix’s Foxy Lady. On balance Soul Limbo and Hang Em High are still the right choices from that LP. The Uptight LP is more fascinating. There’s a weird non-verbal vocal on the bluesy “Blues In The Gutter” and a steamy, gospel bass and drums part to “Children Don’t Get Weary” but as Judy Clay joins them on vocals it’s a better candidate for a Judy Clay piece.

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