Booker T. Jones returns to Memphis for performance
[...] 71, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is playing his Hammond organ with the same energy he did when Booker T. and the M.G.'s served as the house band for Stax Records in the 1960s and influenced popular music with their funky instrumental hits like "Green Onions" and "Time is Tight."
Joining him will be teenagers from the Stax Music Academy, an after-school program for aspiring musicians who idolize Jones and the other musicians who worked for Stax, from Otis Redding to Sam and Dave.
Jones says he was 14 when he played saxophone — not piano or organ — on "Cause I Love You" for Satellite Records, which soon after became Stax Records.
The song, with its funky bass groove and Jones' punchy organ riffs from a Hammond M3, hit No. 1 on the Billboard R&B Chart in 1962.
Booker T. and the M.G.'s kept their role as the Stax house band and kept churning out influential music, such as the instrumental "Time is Tight," which Jones says is his favorite from the Booker T. and the MGs catalog.
In the mid-1960s, during some of the most turbulent days of the American civil rights movement in the South, the band's makeup was a lesson in racial harmony.
At Stax Music Academy, located in the gritty Memphis neighborhood known as Soulsville, 17-year-old Kaylin Fields is learning alto saxophone, and she also sings.