MUSIC: Booker T Jones Profile

Wow. I said stuff, he listened and then he, like, said stuff back. I mean… wow. You’d be right in assuming that, for someone who took their first tentative steps in the art of conversation sometime around 1974, the novelty might have worn off by now. For that matter, you may also think that the successful completion of a 25-minute phone call shouldn’t really necessitate a celebratory jumping up and down on the spot. Such, I discover, is the unselfconscious response to crossing off the name that, ever since the death of Johnny Cash, has reigned supreme at the top of my Would Love To Talk To list.
Booker T. Jones. Born in Memphis on 12 Nov 1944. One of the key figures who took all they’d learned from the gospel they played in church and applied it to a new, secular, heart-baring musical form: soul. The organ playing head of The MGs, house band for the Stax label, and therefore one of the most influential acts in the history of popular music. Supplier of the bare bones upon which the likes of Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, the Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett and Albert King sung with largely unchartered abandon about matters of the flesh. A scholarly man who’d split his time between Stax and Indiana University, where he studied classical music composition. Who wrote songs like ‘I Love You More Than Words Can Say’ and ‘Born Under a Bad Sign.’ And who is on the other end of the line.
Regular “How are you?” opening pleasantries reveal that, later today, Jones will be flying down from his home north of San Francisco to play the Coachella festival in Indio, California. Unusually, the question is reciprocated. “You’re in England?” Bristol, yeah. “Oh, ok, cool. Bristol, wooah, I haven’t been there in a while. Nice town.” He sounds sincere. After all, he played the Colston Hall with Otis Redding in 1967, part of the UK tour when the impact their songs were making first began to sink in. “We were Southern boys, we didn’t know the music had been outside of our territory. To see people who’d been listening to us on pirate radio sitting in the front row, singing all the words, was such a compliment. I remember the whole town, the show, the theatre. It was a nice brisk day.”
I’m desperate to talk more about Stax but, after all this time, another five minutes won’t hurt. Instead, I’ll make polite inquiries about ‘Potato Hole.’ Must be nice to be releasing your first album in close on two decades? “It’s been a long time, yeah.” Why now? There follows a chastening lesson of an answer: never be so presumptuous as to second-guess where the most personal revelations of an interview will stem from. “Music has been churning inside me my whole life. I’ve always had the inspiration to put an album out, but haven’t always had the opportunity. For many years I was languishing with the music caught up inside me and not actually coming out. Now that’s over and I’ve got a release – in both ways.”
Those seem like extraordinary circumstances for a man with your musical history. Were you unable to get a deal? “Yeah. And I’ve also been pretty stubborn and singular in my musical quest. I didn’t really conform in the late 60s when I was at Stax, and that cost me. I had a love of jazz, country music, rock, but it was just out of place there. Which is fine,” he says in concessionary tone. “But I walked out...”
Did it feel that Stax were treating you more as an employee than a musician in your own right? “That’s exactly right. I absolutely was an employee, and they had every right to say ‘We’re doing very well and we want to continue with that.’ But, you know, I wasn’t the only one: Otis Redding was a big Rolling Stones fan, Eddie Floyd liked rock.”
‘Potato Hole’ was the result of jamming with Drive-By Truckers, the results “kind of lending themselves to a big funky southern rock ‘n’ roll band.” Neil Young also features. There are covers of Outkast and Tom Waits. It confirms an appetite for listening to new music that hasn’t diminished since playing on Stax’s first hit, Rufus and Carla Thomas’ ‘Cause I Love You.’ When that charted, did you think ‘I really might be onto something here’?
“No. I was in the eleventh grade. What I was onto was the best after-school job anyone could possibly imagine! A staff player making something like $15 a day. I was the highest paid kid in town. I borrowed the baritone sax from the school band room, my friend David Porter came to get me out of class, and borrowed a car to take me over to Stax, so [chuckles heartily] it was all just thrown together. I had no idea it would go any further than Memphis, our local neighbourhood.”
What was the music you drew on when you switched to the organ? “I had taken piano lessons, studied Bach and Handel, and took formal organ lessons from my teacher, Mrs Cole. But at home I listened to Roy Hamilton, blues records on the radio and around town, Hank Williams, a lot of gospel music, playing hymns for the men’s bible class on Sunday mornings. I’d sneak into the church with my dad’s key and play the big pipe organ.”
Last year, one of Jones’ charges, Mavis Staples, told me a little about Southern life in the 60s. “A black family moves into a neighbourhood and the next morning when they get up and go outside, there’s graffiti sprayed on their garage: ‘N-word go home’. Their car is all painted up, some have Klan crosses in the yard.” I put it to Jones that this can’t have been an easy time or place for a multiracial act like The MGs.
“Y’know, Julian, you’re mistaken for this reason: they couldn’t see us. There were no photos of us out at that time. I think black people thought the band was all black, and white people thought it was all white. We didn’t have any difficulty getting on the airwaves. It wasn’t until we played live, and that wasn’t so difficult at first because we either went to a white club or a black club. We kind of side-stepped all the pitfalls, except the restaurants and the hotels. There were times when Al [Jackson, drums] and I would go in to get the food to bring out to Steve [Cropper, guitar] and Duck [Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn, bass], and vice versa. The worst that could happen was you got tossed in jail. But that never happened...”
I tell Jones about one of my favourite records: an outtake from the ‘(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay’ sessions, Redding cawing like a seagull, fluffing the outro and the desk responding “You’re not ever gonna make it as a whistler!”
“I have never heard that!” he replies. “You’ll have to tell me where you got it.” I’ll send you a copy. “That’d be great.” I bring it up because, with everyone dissolving into laughter, it sounds such a pleasure. “Yeah… yeah, it was special.” To this point, Jones’ tone has been light and relaxed. Now there’s a weight. Any time I’ve seen the MGs or other Stax hands interviewed, when talk turns to Redding - four decades on from his death in a plane crash at the age of 26, just a fortnight after the ‘Bay’ sessions - it’s always accompanied by a faraway look and a sigh. This isn’t a line of inquiry to pursue much further. Was it like that from the moment he first sung with you? “Every time I was ever close to him it was special, recording or not.” No further questions.
Mr Jones, I should explain. I’ve sold this interview to my editor on the rather tenuous basis that England are playing the West Indies in Bristol on May 24th. And you’re the man responsible for the theme to Test Match Special. Are you aware of ‘Soul Limbo’s popularity with cricket fans over here? “Absolutely! I’ve always appreciated the cricket fans, because they use my song all the time,” he laughs. “I’ve been so jazzed by that! I’d love to hear that song played in the stadium. I’m gonna have to look you up and have you take me to a game.”