Booker T of the MG's: Time Is Tight

00:00:08 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist, which you can find a link to in the show notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect all right, enjoy the episode. A few songs hit quite like this. Green Onions was recorded in two takes in nineteen sixty two by book Or T and the MG's. They were the house band for Stax Records in Memphis. This song was originally the B side, but once it started making the rounds on radio, it was quickly re released as the A side, going down as one of the most recognizable instrumentals ever. Book Or T, along with the guitar Steve Cropper, drummer Al Jackson Junior, and bassist Louis Steinberg or depending on the y, Donald Duck Dunne, went on to record hits like Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, Hold On Him Coming, and soul Man, and then the process defined the sound of Southern soul, which was way more gritty than the polished sound coming out of Motown. Over the last sixty years, Booker T has been writing, producing, arranging and playing with some of your favorite artists like Otis Reading, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Bill Withers, and of course has been sampled in hip hop like a James Brown drummer, songs by the Roots, Fou Tang Clan and others. He wrote about it in his memoir Time Is Tight My Life. Note by note, Booker T sat with Bruce Hadlim in front of a ham and C three organ so he could talk and play us through his career. This is Broken Record season three Liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Hadlim speaking with Booker T from Bridge Studio in Brooklyn. I do want to start today talking about your new book, Time Is Tight, Yeah, which is fabulous for many many reasons, and I think everyone should read. Thank you. What interested me particularly was, you know, there's this perception people have of I think, particularly Southern musicians, soul musicians, that you guys learned everything in the church or singing on street corners. You were a serious music academic, You studied very hard from an early age. How did that? Why did that happen? Well, I think your first two elements of the formula are exactly correct the church I was. I remember singing Jesus Loves Me as a little boy in Sunday School and my first solo was in church. And then as I grew up a little earlier some of my friends. I met Maurice White and sixth grade and David Porter in ninth grade and they were singing and do up groups on the street corner. And I came from a background where my grandfather built a school down in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and he mandated that his children go to school, first his school, and then that they go to high school and that they go to college. So all his kids, including my father, went father graduated m I and became a math teacher, and he wanted all his grandkids to do the same thing. So I was one of those. So it was predetermined that I was going to study and go to college. And I saved up nine hundred dollars on my paper out to that effect. Studied Latin in the ninth grade, so you know. And the music was came from my mother's side, the classical music. My grandmother was a piano teacher. She had a piano taught my mother. My mother played Let's WC. Chopin in the house and that that music affected me. So I got it from a lot of different angles, including those first ones you mentioned. When did you realize you're studying music? You started, I think with a clarinet. The clarinet was the first one I owned. The first one I started with was oboe, the first formal instrument. But before that, as a little boy, had a ukulele that got me into guitar. So kind I kind of see myself as a guitar player. You see yourself as a guitar player. Now I pick it up first more usually when I'm writing a song. When did you know music was going to be your life? As a young boy, started hearing music in my mind since I can remember various sounds and melodies and and I didn't know what to call them, you know, And that I think was the challenges I grew older, what to call everything. So that's where the formal education came in, you know, taking piano lessons, organ lessons, theory lessons. In high schoo I had to put a name to everything, you know, so I could communicate with the outside world, you know. Yeah, and these are you know, this is pre integration your school. You went to an all black school, went to an African American school, saying in the choir in the first grade at port of Junior High School, which was all blacks, no whites, and you but the music education was really intense, and you took theory lessons after school. That was in nineteenth grade, starting in about nineteenth fifty nine. And then there's this amazing passage in your book where you are as is years later, you're working at stacks. I think you're doing the arrangement for when something is wrong with my Baby, the great Sam and Dave song. And I think the next thing that happens is you're trying to figure out your your college at that point in Indiana, you're trying to figure out what you're going to play for your trombone recite. Yeah. Yeah, those were coincide or incidental. So you were flying back and forth stack sessions from and you were getting an education at one of the great music colleges in the country. I think you mentioned a great instance. I'll play you know that's a great you know, combination of a church feeling, you know, the way that the way the notes move in the base and in the classical combination of those influences in my life, but the church I think was the main, the strongest influence in my musical makeup. One of the other influences you mentioned, and this is fascinating to me, and I'd love you to walk me through. It was when you wrote Green Onions and I think you were probably nineteen or something seen seventeen, but you said it's because you'd studied back counterpoint. I wanted to go to UCLA or Indiana University, so I had to pass a theory I had to pass. As you're to go to India University. They were going to ask questions about the basics of music. I was music put together. So that's where my theory class started. You know, the scale, twelve notes in the scale, and what are they the third? And what are the poor changes? Those? The way I moved those notes were basically dictated by J. S. Bo contrepurnal movement. You know, it makes sense if we didn't think about it, but it's it's it's ingrained in our Western society. What I just played, that's the way the notes moved other countries or whatever. So in figuring that out, I m this, what if a note went, That's where the Blues came in, changing this from a major third to a minor third. That that third one, two three, what about the minor three? So that's when Greenlandians came from instead of And I thought, what if the third was a minor and what if the top moved down like a bat because back can counterpoint the top exactly, it moves, it moves in the opposite the bottom moves up. I mean the bottom moves up while the top moves down. Wow. So I kind of played that on the piano. I thought that sounds kind of cool, you know. And then the changes, of course, are just regular blues changes that we played all the time. You go from that to the B flat and then back to the one. So it's the twelve bar blues basically, but it has this for its second chord instead of I think it would feel different if I played it like that. So that's basically the history of Health Queens came about. And was there a particular box song that inspired that or just it was just generally it's just contrapuntal rules, just the rules that we learned, you know. And that's the major scale. Um, and I want to go back to your education and more about Memphis. But there's one other great example you mentioned in the book. There's many great examples, but you wrote the great Albert King's song Born under a Bad Sign, and you said you picked a particular key for that. Yeah, yeah, I don't know where that came from. That you know that that door opened that we gotta call. We being myself and my partner William Bell, that we were We were staff producers at the time and we were responsible for recording Albert King, and he was coming down the next day. So we went into my den the other night before Friday night to write something him and uh, that came into my mind. And William has been working on the lyrics content born under a Bad Sign. They've been working on that for himself. So the two came together that night before. But then, you know, at Indiana, I had learned about, you know, the urgency that you could put into certain keys, that that we're we're not inherent in some keys. Music is a just say music music. Music, music is parties out for our atmosphere and some some some keys have more emotional content for uh than others. So I went to C flat minor for Albert you know, a D flat D flat the same key, so that's yeah, yeah, so this this is different. That's the Albert's key yea. And the way he played his guy, so he pulled his strings, you know on those keys, and we got this tension, you know, and this this emotional necessity out of this song, and it just makes it just playing it right here now makes you feel kind of differently. It's like something ominous is is is you know, and you think of it, and that came from the key that came from that game, from going from here to here. Yeah, and you mentioned that you like C sharp Wagner, Yeah, Chopin, you know, they were they played in those keys. They didn't mind writing six sharps, you know, they made the musicians playing those keys. And but it had this this uh, this feeling, you know, this emotion you know, and and the blues and that key it's just unbelievable, you know. To me, it's not a common it's not a common key for for blues though well, I don't know. It was perfect for this and for Albert. I think a lot of blues musicians when I was in Memphis played in the in the simpler keys, you know, F and and maybe C or g minor. But but when you go to the monar keys like that a flat uh G sharp manner, there's a certain there's another element that comes in. It's I guess it's the way that universe is put together, the makeup of the Adams or something as something it is, so it's more more emphatic. Yeah, and so the born on her bad sides and C sharp minor. Wow, the same way as so Pen's concertos. And it was very great, good key for Albert. He just killed it. Now he was a guitar player, so it's a little easier to move. And he's also a right handed guitar player, kind of like Jimi Hendrix, so it wasn't such an issue. You know, left hand and guitar players have to push the strings, but a right hand and guitar player like Albert can pull the strings. So he had more strength, more physical strength over there right on the upper strings. So he just he just killed it. It was it was. It was a great experience. Oh amazing. Yeah, I want to go back to We talked about severe academic background, but then you started playing along Beal Street. Now people now know Beal Street because of the of the Baldwin book and they just made it into a movie. But it was this famous street in Memphis where you're from. Can you tell me what it was like playing in those clubs back then you were just a kid. Yeah, I was right off of Beal Street on Hernando, just about a couple of doors down at the Flamingo Room upstairs on the second floor was where they were the only ones that actually let me in. Cliff Miller was the owner of the place and it was his place, so he brought me in. And I couldn't get into the club Handy, which was on the other side of Bell that was Sunbeam Mitchell's club. I was too young, and he I guess, I guess he could have broken the rules that had me in, But but Cliff was the one that was interested in me. He brought me in to play bass, and I played bass and Jane Bowles Miller's ban and William Mitchell's ban. How how long had you played the bass at that point? I picked up the string bass at Book of Washington Junior High School. They had a bass and I played some bass and in the combo there. Yeah, by the way, this is probably be a good time to pause and say, your name really is Booker T. My name is. My name is Booker T. Jones. I was named after my father, Booker T. Jones Senior, who was named after Booker T. Washington, who was an educator and uh built built a college Tuskegee. I was a Tuskegee. Uh. Yeah, So and you attended Booker T. Washington High Schooker T. Washington High School? Yes, I did. Okay. So while you're so, you were playing in these clubs? Were they rough clubs? Was it was it strange for a kid to be in there? Yes? It was unsafe. Uh. I mean there was a lot going on on Bill Street, you know, Bille Street was everything from you know, prostitution and whiskey running and there's a lot of stuff going on down there. And my parents, but my parents picked out a couple of musicians they trusted to watch over me. They picked out Floyd Newman to take me home at night and take me over to the club. He hated it, but my dad had been as algebra teacher, but he did it anyway. So your dad had been his age. He had listen to your dad. Yeah. Uh, your dad is uh, you know, he's a high school teacher. Yeah, he's always in a white shirt and tie. Yeah, and he'd been he thinks it's okay for you to play these clubs. Well, you know my dad, I appreciated. My dad supported my musical passion and if I wanted to do it, he sat out. He sat out in club side on so many clubs out on the countryside while I played, and he just supported and brought me the instruments, and he was my benefactor. You know, is there there may be a picture in the book of him and his algebra class with his white shirt and tie and his and his pointer, you know, teaching kids to to uh, to calculate. Yeah, he seems like just an amazing character. He was. I don't know if I wouldn't be here without him. I mean, he bought the first clarinet, and he just he just you know, took me and put Maurice White's drums in the back of his car and Frank Easley's based fit all that stuff in his car and took us to the clubs. And yeah, maybe he may be the nicest algebra teacher who ever lived. He was, he was grade. A lot of people loved him. Yeah, And then at sixteen, you started. It wasn't called stacks then it was called satellite. But you did your first session. Yeah, I was fifteen. I was in tenth grade and the guy Floyd Newman I was telling you about was there baritone sax player, but he was also a high school teacher, so he couldn't make this particular session because he was in school. And David Porter came and got me out of school my Alzebrath class or tenth grade Alzabra class to play for Rufus and Carlin Thomas played baritone sacks on their calls I Love You. Their first record its stacks and yeah, and that's got a lot of baritone sacks that record. It does I play through the whole song? How many tanks did you do? Oh? I don't know. That was a pretty We didn't I take too much time to record that. That was closer being a first take, I think something like that. And then did you get more sessions after that? I did? I did. I took the opportunity to tell them that I could play piano, because you know, it was it was Floyd Newman's job to play saxophone over baritone sacks. I couldn't take it. Yeah, I like how you cut school to do it. Yeah, he's a teacher. He can't cut, he can't cut glass. Yeah. So I was there and I told him I could play piano, and I got the job working after school as a session player right after that, when they found out I could play piano. Do you remember some of your other early sessions. Yeah. The first one I remember was Prince Comedy. Oh my goodness, what was that song? Yeah, it was a great blue song. I'm coming home, I'm going home, Prince Comedy. Yeah, yeah, that was the first. And I played the oil and solo on that one. That was a blue song. Now you you are sitting in front of a B three Hammond B three, and we've got the speaker in the other room. I think this is a C three. This is a C three because it's got the wooden sides over here. Okay, now I was I was just told this. The C three was the church version. Yeah, so that you couldn't see you couldn't see the organist legs. Yeah and that Yeah, yeah, it was heavier. It looks better. Yeah. Now you you talk a lot about the B three year the C three Hammond, that it could make any sound you imagined. What what did you mean by that? Well, you have drawbars you can pull out and mix the tones. And no, I don't know of any other instrument that you can do that. Onse, I don't can't think of any other instrument that you can change like that. You can't do that with the old boy. He can't do it. Maybe guitarists can do it, but I don't know if they can do it as quickly. Right, and the middle you just heard that was that was about five different sounds there from from one note. There was there one particular sound that grabbed you? Or was it the variety that got you? The variety? I mean, that's what my teacher told me when I when I saw the thing. Her name was missus Cole, and I tried to get the lessons on and she said, you know, you can make any sound you want. This sentiment, you can make it sound like a big full orchestra or clarinet or you know. So it was what she told me. It was the opening up of those possibilities. I think that sucked me in. And was she did she teach you gospel style or did she teach you know? She started with this at my first lesson with her well tempered clavier. Yes, Bob, if he lived long enough, he might have written green onions. He would have. He was on inspired, dude. Man. We'll be back with more of a conversation with Booker T. After the break. We're back with more from Booker T. When did you start arranging and writing at stacks? That started with working on David Porter and Isaac Hayes's song Salmon Dave songs Oldis reading songs. They gave me the freedom to change their songs around the way I heard them. I worked on Baby, they had written in a different way, and I gave it kind of a motown field. I changed the bassline. They let me change when something is wrong with My Baby and some of the well. When we were working on Try a Little Tenderness, Oldis gave me the freedom to work with the bass parts and the quartal quotal changes in that and yeah, they were all open to my changes. Can you show me what you did on a song like um you mentioned Carla Thomas Baby, which was a song she didn't like, and then you finally made it work. What did you do? I gave it a little motown feel like that. I changed the baseline, and I changed the tempo and the melody, but on the melody is the same as they wrote the words. They wrote the words and lyrics same as they wrote. Did you change any of the chords underneath? No, No, it's the same chord as they wrote. Yeah, it's just the way it feels. Now. Were you guys, I mean, Stax was this incredible factory of hits. Were you competitive with Motown? Were you looking at what they were doing and saying we're going to beat them? Not at all. I think we were. We used Motown as as an instructive element because they were so great, so knowledgeable, They made so many good, good decisions with their music, and it was so so much fun to listen to it. But we were we didn't consider ourselves in competition because we were so different. You know, we were simplistic. We talked about not making the music too complicated and keeping it accessible, you know, with the baselines and the drum beats. So to me, it wasn't competitive at all. I don't think we could have competed with them. Really. Can you tell me about meeting Otis reading for the first time? Yeah, Otis was um um, an humble guy, he was, you know, he was really excited about making music all the time. He was willing to do everything, carry the instruments and go get the food. And he was the driver for Johnny Jenkins and the pan topers. And the first time I met him, he was out on the street loading the suitcases onto the sidewalk. You know, how do you need anything? And you know, what can I do? And then can I sing a song? Now? He can't sing us sing a song? He never had somebody a Roady wanted to sing before. Yeah, no, roadies didn't do that. And we let him sing, and then he wasn't a roady anymore. After he sang the first two lines of these Arms of Mine, he was sitting right here next to me. And of course then by that time we wanted to get the tape roll and record this guy. So did he say play this quarter? Did he just start singing his own? No, it was all intuitive. He didn't. He didn't. He didn't mention any course, but he started right in on key, you know, so either he had perfect pitch or something. But he I didn't have to play any notes for him before he started. He knew exactly what he was singing. And it was his song. So he was just in an instant. I don't know, maybe he was the easiest in that way, actually, m And then you added a lot of different things to his songs as time grew on. He would look over, he would he would look over to me, and he dictated a lot with his mouth. He would harm you know that, he would saying, you know, bla blah blah. He would sing the lines to the horns. But a lot of the intricate stuff that I did under neath he allowed me to do. You know, well you just mentioned sad song. That song I can't sing it, but you just sang a little bit of it, and that's the song. You would do a beautiful company too. What a better example would be, so you know the walk up to that those those are the freedoms that that I had to with him was to to to um, to insert musical elements to help build there. And he would wait for things like that. Oh yeah, he was. He was dictatorial, but he also gave a lot of freedoms with him. Okay, I'm just gonna wait for a minute for the hair in the back of my neck to go back down because I was just so fantastic. Yeah, and then there was so much the way you describe it, Uh, he was in San Francisco for a while and he wrote Doc in the Bay, and then there was so much excitement around what became his last album. U just the making of it. You sort of you described the place being almost kind of in a not a frenzy, but almost a kind of it was a state of siege. To be honest with you, he sneaked it on us. We knew that Steve had kind of prepared us. Steve was kind of the four Minutes stacks. He was the the A and R guy, and he told us we're going to be recording some new sessions with Oldist, but we didn't know they were going to be non stop sessions, and we didn't know that they were going to be song after song after song. And that would you know, include not going home and staying in the studio and ordering food and we never did that before. That was the only time we ever did that, stayed in the studio day after day after day. And I think it culminated with that song um sitting on Doc with the Bay. But there were so many great ones and it just went one one to the other. So yeah, so that was a there was a middle attitude that maybe Oldest had a premonition that he needed to record those songs immediately without any you know, any delay of taking a night off for a day off for that type of thing. And you played piano on I did. I played piano almost almost everything during that those sessions, And was try little tenderness part of those sessions as well? Was that earlier? No, that was earlier, okay, because that arrangement, I mean, it's an old song is so unusual even now when you hear it, it's sort of disarming. What how did you put that song together? That was a trip that I made down from Indiana to play on that. Think that my contribution was to um to raise the keys rather than playing it in one key, so it moves up during the course of the song. Yeah. I think this was one of his kind of foot stomping masterpieces that he came up with indict and sang the lines to the horns and and had this interaction with Al Jackson Junior, the drummer. Yeah. Now when you were arranging, were you writing out charts for the horns or was it more it? Was it more informal than that. This one was informal. This one's a head chart. I didn't put anything on paper. I don't think we had strings on this song. But when we had strings, and we could always tell the horn players to play by ear and just hum the list of them. But when we had strings and we had had to write it down, Yeah, string players can't do that. Let's yeah, well they can, some of them, but but usually I would just you know, write a chart for them. Is it sort of incredible scene in your book at Oldis Readings Funeral when you were supposed to perform and you couldn't. Yeah, that was tough. That was tough. Um that was there in this big auditorium for Oldis Readings Funeral and making Georgie And oh it was a song that I played in church a thousand times, and I think I had brought the music just in case I got in trouble, and I think, who was it, Joe Simon was gonna sing? And I heard the children walked in and then what I walked in and I just I just my professionalism left me. And it was it was a song that near the cross, Near the Cross. I had played that so many times that's what I was supposed to play. I couldn't think of that, to save my life. Well, you just played for him, so that's but I couldn't think of it that history. I just you know, did you finally get it out? Or I think I think I finally got the music out. I had to and put it and I actually had to put it on the new organ and played it. And once I saw the notes on the page and I remembered it. Now, I want to talk to them about a couple of the songs you did. You did a lot of those songs as mgs, but soul Dressing was one of them. How did that come up? That was? That was? I would call that an Indiana song. I drove so many hours down Highway thirty seven from Indiana. That's me driving down looking around at the houses, the farmhouses, and that's when a lot of the melodies came to me. When I was driving, you know, north and south on Highway thirty seven through Kentucky and Indiana, northern tennessee the scenes, you know, the pastoral scenes and those kind of peaceful scenes. Would you pull over and write them down? No, I just try to remember it, Just try to remember it okay. And I want to ask about Slim Jenkins joint. That was New York City. I came up with that in Memphis on piano. I think it ended up playing piano on it. That's the story about that song. That seems like every song has a story. But when you mentioned that we were trying to record that song in New York and it was at Atlantic Studios on where we and Cream had I guess it was Cream had just become a big act there. And I just if somebody, you know, if we were working in here right now and someone came in and sat there and I was coming up with something new, it would just totally distract me. I would lose my concentration. So I would say, if anybody else in the studio that's not actually working on the record, would you just please, you know, just step outside or just don't be here now, because I got distracted. We're working on this song, about to track down and everything. Time came to put the organ in and this fella comes in and he just he just walks in there, Nobody says, and he sits down like right over here by the wall and crosses his legs and doesn't look at me. He just sits there and I'm supposed to do the organ part, right, I'm totally distracted. All I can do is look at this guy and uh, And I found out it was Eric Clapton and he basically owned the place. At that point, I walked over Tom dowllis fella right there. Well it's just Eric just don't matter. It's just it wasn't a big deal to Tom. They weren't distracted at all. Oh your engineer was Tom down? Yeah? Tom hung Yeah, he says, I was just just going. So I walked back out there and I played that, but I could not get in my mind off who the hell is this sitting in here like that? And I asked him a few years later when we were down in Texas and I came to play there, Eric clapping, he had a guitar festival down and down was that you? Yeah? That was me. He just he just wanted to check out the session. Well people did that normally, you know, other people did that. They had other people come in and said But I was always so private and so I don't know, so focused. It kind of distracted me to have somebody unless they were working on the music anyway, there's another great scene in your book where you play the Monterrey hot festive. Is that in the book that I'll talk about that? Yeah, where you you know, you guys, you're there with Otis Redding. Yeah, you're wearing I'm not sure they were matching suits, but we were in beautiful suits and you're incredibly professional and you go back to your hotel. There's just like hippies hanging around everywhere. You're looking, what the who are these people? We stuck out like a sore thomb. It was amazing, but it became this legendary performance. It was, uh, yeah, we wish we had some other clothes because it was we had these suits made of Landscape Brothers, you know, and Memphis. Everybody went there because that's where Elvis had this stuff done and they were great. They could get just suited up quickly and yeah, and they made nice stuff. Yeah, but you but you looked like algebra teachers compared to everybody. Absolutely. Yeah, they were. They were green silk suits, you know, conservative suits, and that's what we wanted stage. That's what we thought we were supposed to wear. Al Jackson, you know, that was his idea, and that's what we did uh. You know, in Memphis in the time you were, the MGS were sort of held up. I don't know if they were held up at the time, but they are now as an integrated band. There weren't many integrated bands in the country, and you were probably the most famous at that point. Were you conscious of what was going on in Memphis at the time before, for example, Martin Luther King came and he was killed there, but for the Garbageman strike? Was that stuff? Not so much conscious of the fact that we were integrated. That was that was a subtext. It was not important. You didn't think much of it. Didn't think much of it that the bass player was white and the guitar player was white. It was not a big deal. M But you know, like I said, we were a family, so we were close, you know, um, And it was kind of a big surprise to me later when I would you do interviews, and that would be the first question that people ask. My God, they're more interested in in our different in races than they are in the in the music, you know. I would get questions like that from overseas. But no, we were aware, of course that we were different races. But it was not a pervasive issue. We liked the way those guys played, and they were they were we were together. They were part of us, you know, we were part of them. It became an issue after Martin Luther King was killed and Steve Cropper became a bigger issue. He said some things that seemed to blame Martin Luther King for stirring things up in Memphis. What was that like for you? At different times? It was a different difficulties. Later years, it was more difficult than it was at the time. I was unaware of that um in nineteen sixty eight. It was a very pervasive, multi headed octahedron working in Memphis against exactly what we were doing. There was a huge establishment that was dedicated to separate people like us and not have what was going on at nine twenty six Maclamore going on. There were there were people in Memphis who didn't want freedom writers to come into town and work towards that. But I was unaware of it at the time, which is a good thing, I think, because you know it would I think it would have hindered the music making had I been aware of how strong the opposition was to racist working together. When we come back. We'll pick back up with Booker T and more on the complications of playing soul music in the South. We're back with more of Bruce's conversation with Booker T. There's an incredible scene in your book when you decide you're going to leave Stacks, which at that point is run by Al Bell, and you write a song and play it for him. Can you tell me that story? Yeah? I think you know. It was the beginning of my trying to increase my awareness in general and kind of realizing that I could maybe think on a different level. And I became aware of this huge i'll have to call it a monster, multi headed monster that was moving about Memphis where I was, that was effectively dictating to two races of people, dictating the whites dictating the blacks, and it was it was undetectable to most people. But I think I became aware of this and I wrote the song about it and called old Man Trouble about defeating this unknown force that you couldn't see and doing it in your own mind and getting getting your mind free. Do you remember any of the song now, Yeah, there's a man called Trouble and he follows me everywhere I go now, old man trouble. You can't get me now, I know. So, Yeah, it was a song that I did, and I've spent a lot of money on did a big horn rangement, string section. Now Al Jackson, Ronnie Campone and those those guys were it actually got. Stephen Stills recorded a few league few years later on one of his soul albums. And so you played this for Al Bell and Al Bell was African American. Yeah, and he had become the president, he was the leader of the company. Yeah, it was reminiscent for me. If Sam cooks the change is gonna come. You know, it was nineteen sixty eight. You could feel it in the air in nineteen sixty eight, you know, the um it was a pivotal year for a lot of things. And but this this was this was a real thing. This was a dynasty that was at work in Memphis. It was a it was an oppressive force that was that was working man there. But it blought up at the surface, you know. But he he didn't have a good reaction to the song. It upset him. He had the same reaction I think that he would have. I think he even mentioned Sam Cook's song. He was the president of a of a record company that was about to really break open, and and it had to make a statement that the company eventually did make the statement as as a voice of Black America, but he wanted to be. He wanted to be I think a little more gradual than the song would have dictated. M And it was an interacial company at the time, you know, it wasn't just a Black America, black record company. I think he was. I think, as I said in the book, I think we had the same goal. You know, Al actually had been part of a Dr King's team at one point. We had the same goal, but I think we were taking to different directions toward it. And after you played it for him, you went back into the studio. Yeah, and can you tell me what you did? Yeah, we didn't. We didn't make a deal that night, which is what I had wanted. I went to his house looking for a deal, and I became a parent. I looked at the space. We weren't going to make a deal. I realized that it was just time. It was time to go, So I wanted to um. I wanted to sever all my links with the company. So I walked into the control room and I am. You know, I raised anything new that I had done at that point, including that song, including that song, and you couldn't what was it? You had to tape over it. You couldn't reverse the tape right, No, And I'm sort of glad I did because they had the freeing, they owned all the masters, and they could put out anything they wanted after I left. So if I was going to make any decisions, that had to be that night. And so yes, I put I raised multiple, multiple machines by pressing the record button and then just went home and packed and went to California. It's it's like a scene from a novel, just these machines running and you're then you just leave. It's incredible, and I'm glad I did. It turned out they put out many outtakes of the MG, stuff that we weren't finished with, that we hadn't even named, and I've heard of stuff, well we're not finished with that one. And they they other companies bought the masters from Stacks. A Fantasy bought Stacks, and then they just put out what they wanted to without permission. They owned it. So if you know, if you're leaving a record company, you gotta you can't leave anything there, you know, And then you went to California. Yeah, you didn't have a lot of money, didn't have a lot of money. You didn't. I can't remember what you're making at that point at stacks, like one hundred and twenty five a week or something, when my first deal with Herb Alpert was more than I had made in a Memphis in a year. My first Yeah, yeah, they gave me. They made me very comfortable. But you you describe yourself as almost being a little at sea after after your time at Stacks, trying to figure out what was next. But then you almost immediately discover Bill Withers and tell me about that story. It was another almost two years before Bill was brought to me. I got a phone call from Clarence Avan, a friend of Al Bell's. Clarence had sold stacks for Al Bell. He had sold stacks to Paramount, and so Al was crazy about Clarence Avan. It's Clarence, This Clarence that for a long time. We kept our relationship, although I didn't stay there. And Clarence called and he was very excited about this guy in Inglewood that was building airplane toilets and he was a carpenter and he wanted me to listen to his songs. He described him as a songwriter. And Bill came out to my ranch in Malibu with a big, thick notebook full of songs. And what kind of guy wasn't a friend of guy? You know, very just like he was very happy, jokes, joking, making a lot of jokes and kind of assuming, kind of a little a little like Otis was. But basically U Bill's. Bill's mentality is that of a carpenter. He's you know, he's always looking to build something. He's always done something in some of his kids houses or changed to something apartment And secondarily as a songwriter, that's the kind of person. When we walked into the studio, he asked me, I had everything and like to set up. I had drums, baseball, people out from Memphis and Readier recorded the songs and he says, who's going to sing these songs? And he just wanted to be songwriter? No, he saw he saw himself as a songwriter and a carpenter and saw it as a side project. And what was the first song he sang, ain't know sunshine? Whence he's gone? So how long? Did that. How long did it take you to say, Oh, I think you're really good. I never said that, but I did. I know that? And now, um, in that book he had songs. I didn't get the best. Well, I got some great ones, but I didn't get lean on Me. I didn't get he had all those in the book. Yeah, and then you produced one of the biggest albums of I think all time, which is Willie Nelson Stardust. How did that come about? That was when I was living in Maliboe, had of an apartment and Willie had rented apartment underneath me, which I had thought was empty because I never saw anybody down there. But one day I saw him running up the beach. The red headed guys looks just like Willie Nelson. What it was Willie Nelson, he weighed because he's just a friendly guy. Did you know his work by that point, Oh of course, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, I knew It's read Stranger and everything. Yeah, And I was so surprised when he turned in and came into the gate to my unit and he saw me. I stayed out there and we realized that we were neighbors, and that's when we started jamming. At night. You'd come up to my deck because I had electric piano right by the window, and we jammed there, and the songs we jammed on, just messing around with each other were the ones that ended up on the Stardust Down. And then you, I mean you did you played bass on Bob Dylan for Knocking on Heaven's Door. Yeah, I was a bass player. That was my first real gig in Memphis. That was how I got most of my gigs was on bass. But you you said earlier you still regard yourself as a guitar player. I did. Yeah, I still, Yeah, I have. I have guitars all over the house and all of my studio. So that's the first thing you kind of think of when you're when you're writing. That's it. I had a Sarah silvertone. That's me playing a Sarah silvertone on William Bell's Forgot to Be Your LoVa. Oh really. You also wrote a great guitar lick which I don't think enough people know about, which is the opening to Eddie Floyd's Big Bird, Big Bird. Yeah, that's a fabulous lick. You sort of hint in the book that, like the guitarists were why don't you stick to the organ like they didn't they didn't want the competition. Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's me on the silvertone. Yeah play that was a Sears guitar. Yeah. Wow. And then you ended up working with Neil Young Shanado O'Connor drive by Truckers. He drive by Truckers. You did a m you did you read it a Jackie Wilson song that became a big hit for Rita Coolie, for Rita Coolidge, who was your sister in law at the point at that point, but you totally changed that song and it became a big, big hit. Yeah. Yeah, I had worked at Jackie Ribinson, Jackie at the Regal Theater in Chicago. Oh, what an entertainer. He was dynamic and that song just but but I often sometimes hear a song and a new a different arrangement will come to me. That's what that was. I had recorded that on myself and readA heard it and did it okay. And then you got a new album which is called Time. Well it's not called Time's Type, but it's a by note and it's a companion to the book. Yeah, and what inspired you to do that? Well, the chapters are the same as the chapter chapter titles of the book. The songs on the note by note uh because I Love You, which is the first chapter of the book. And it's the first song I ever played on in the studio, played baritone sax on that in the first chapter. So it's the first and the last. We made a new recording of calls I Love You with Evye McKenney from the Stax Museum. You know, they have some great talent there, this young talents the at Stax Museum and Joshua Ladette Ladette and you know some of the American Idol winners and some of the New Voice winners. Uh. And Ty Taylor is on it singing these albums of mine. And my son ted who is my new accomplice, has two two songs on there. He's a he's a he's my go to guitarist now and and and songwriter and um yeah, it's it's um. It's a composite of of of of a lot of the chapters of the book. Is there more new stuff? Are the people you want to work with now? Oh? Yeah, there's a new album coming with Ted Teddy Jones, my son kind of like uh, well, every song is different. But on the new album, note by note, there's um, maybe I need saying that we wrote together and then that's paralyzed. That's getting a lot of good airplane now that we moved together. And there's a there's a Matt Berninger of the National sent me twenty songs a few months ago and we've recorded that and I'm really excited about that. A new album for him called The Serpent Team Prison and He's which is out now, isn't it. I know it's not out yet. We just finished the production on it. But he's just done a lot of work and written some really great music. And he's the one that I've worked with on representing Memphis here in New York with the Roots with Sharon Jones that they did that duet together, right, That's where we met a good while ago, and we become friends. And you mentioned this in the book. You know, people expect to hear green onions and they expect to hear the hits when you see them, and I don't know what it's like for you to play them. But there is a great story about President Obama when you met him. Tell that, Yeah, we were doing uh, especially of the Why House, and the president was at the back of the house waiting to walk in, and usually bands are expected to play Hail to the Chief, and happened to be playing green Onions, and he and his wife here and the first ladies started walking in, well actually kind of bopping in to green Onions, and that got film, that got on tape, and he expressed the preference for whenever I was around, to walking into the green onions, right, rather than Hail to the Chief's beautiful Yeah, that's all. Booker T's memoirs out down and be sure to check out bookert dot com to see when you can catch him and his band on the road. You can check out some more of his music by visiting broken record podcast dot com, where we have a playlist available for you to listen to, and while you're there, sign up for a behind the scenes newsletter. Broken Record is produced with help from Jason Gambrell, Meal Bell, and Leo Rose for Pushkin Industries. A theme music is by Kenny Beats. Stay tuned for next week's episode with Richard Russell Xcel Record Audience. I'm just richly thanks for listening. M