Booker T. Jones The Cool Dude

With apologies to groups like The Meters, Bar-Kays, and Average White Band, when it comes to all-time great instrumental R&B bands, for most folks Booker T. & the MG's represent the gold standard. And with good reason'or, actually reasons! First of all, as the house band of the hallowed Stax label, The MG's pretty much invented the sound of Southern soul, playing on records by everybody from Otis Redding to Wilson Pickett to Carla Thomas. Second, on their own as Booker T & the MG's, they came up with some of the most indelible instrumental jams of all time, including'but by no means limited to!''Green Onions.' And, third, each member of the band was an absolute monster on their instrument, to this day revered and copied by untold numbers of musicians. Indeed, by the time the mid '60s rolled around, bands on both sides of the Atlantic wanted to sound like Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Al Jackson, Jr, and Lewie Steinberg (replaced about halfway through this collection by the great Donald 'Duck' Dunn).

McLemore Avenue is a 1970 album by Booker T. & the M.G.s, consisting entirely of mostly instrumental covers of songs from the Beatles' album Abbey Road (released only months earlier, in September 1969). The title and cover are an homage to the Beatles album, 926 East McLemore Avenue being the address of the Stax studio in Memphis, as Abbey Road was for EMI in London.
Booker T. Jones said, "I was in California when I heard Abbey Road, and I thought it was incredibly courageous of The Beatles to drop their format and move out musically like they did. To push the limit like that and reinvent themselves when they had no need to do that. They were the top band in the world but they still reinvented themselves. The music was just incredible so I felt I needed to pay tribute to it."

This Rhino U.K. 2012 box set rounds up the prime of Booker T. & the MG's, the five albums they released between 1962 and 1968: Green Onions, Soul Dressing, And Now!, Hip Hug-Her, and Doin' Our Thing. Often, Booker T. & the MG's are seen as nothing more than a singles act but these records illustrate just how deeply their gifts ran, as they are all deeply funky, gritty, soulful records that are easy to enjoy. And when they're collected in this convenient little box, they're even easier – and cheaper – to appreciate.