Booker T and the MG's

A group of musicians who accidentally formed a band and are credited with creating the soul sound despite only releasing one memorable song, or more accurately 5 memorable seconds which they padded into a song and a subsequent four-decade career.

Booker T and the MG's. From Left to right: The first guy, the second guy, the other guy and the final guy. Nobody else can tell the difference either.

Booker T and The MG’s began life as the house band for Stax records which involved showing up every day to play repetitive backing tracks for soul singers to sing repetitive love songs over. Booker T Jones (organ, naming rights), Al Jackson Jr (drums), Steve Cropper (guitar) and Lewis Stienberg (bass). Faithfully laid down dull and unremarkable tunes to prop up the lyrical abilities of Otis Redding, Wilson Picket along dozens of others who have been justifiably forgotten entirely.


Fortunes for the foursome changed in 1962 when the group fooled around with a groove they had written earlier and turned a quick organ and bass riff into an entire track. A brief motif that should have served as a song introduction was needlessly padded out to three minutes and released as a single. The song, and the group, needed a name so the band was called Booker T and the MG’s, which makes sense, and the song entitled Green Onions, which doesn’t. Much to the surprise of everyone at the time (and anyone considering it since) the song went to number 1, which meant a rush album had to released which contained the title track, a “sequel” entitled Mo Onions, which was essentially a poor copy, and a bunch of throwaway instrumental tracks designed to pad the experience out to full length.

Green Onions, about as interesting as the cover would suggest.

Booker T and the MG’s were suddenly a group in their own right and not just the guys who stood behind singers. They had a hit single, a big selling album, a solid reputation and only their inability to write anything worth hearing held them back. Their recorded output for the rest of the sixties featured a number of instrumental covers which nobody liked as much as the originals and original compositions which nobody liked as much as Green Onions. At one point, bassist Steinberg was replaced by Donald “Duck” Dunn but the only reason anyone noticed was because Dunn had a silly nickname.

If they had stuck to recording their own music, Booker T and the MG’s would be a minor footnote in rock and roll history but the group quickly realised immortality lay with creating a reputation as the backing group of choice which saw them employed as The House Band or backing group for big names like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Blues Brothers and anyone else who felt their credibility would be bolstered by the presence of “The Green Onion guys” behind them instead of anyone equally talented but anonymous. The idea that the were the band who backed the big names took a substantial hit in 2008 when they toured Australia as the backing group of the first winner of Australian Idol.

Australia Idol winner Guy Sebastian (presumably the one on the left), his singles sometimes manage to break into the top fifty in his native Australia

Dunn died in 2012 and Stienberg in 2016 but the band continues to "exist" in the same way that anything which is literally half dead can claim to exist.