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Booker T. & the M.G.'s is an instrumental R&B/funk band that was influential in shaping the sound of Southern soul and Memphis soul. Original members of the group were Booker T. Jones (organ, piano), Steve Cropper (guitar), Lewie Steinberg (bass), and Al Jackson, Jr. (drums). In the 1960s, as members of the house band of Stax Records, they played on hundreds of recordings by artists such as Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Bill Withers, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Johnnie Taylor and Albert King. They also released instrumental records under their own name, such as the 1962 hit single "Green Onions". As originators of the unique Stax sound, the group was one of the most prolific, respected, and imitated of its era. By the mid-1960s, bands on both sides of the Atlantic were trying to sound like Booker T. & the M.G.'s.〔("Ronnie Lane Interview #1, The-Faces.com" ) 〕 In 1965, Steinberg was replaced by Donald "Duck" Dunn, who played with the group until his death in 2012. Al Jackson, Jr. was murdered in 1975, after which the trio of Dunn, Cropper and Jones reunited on numerous occasions using various drummers, including Willie Hall, Anton Fig, Steve Jordan and Steve Potts.〔 The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, a the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee in 2008, and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2012.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Booker T. and the M.G.'s )〕 Having two white members (Cropper and Dunn), Booker T. & the M.G.'s was one of the first racially integrated rock groups, at a time when soul music, and the Memphis music scene in particular, were generally considered the preserve of black culture.〔(''Racial integration'' ) Note also that in jazz, Benny Goodman led the racially integrated Benny Goodman Trio and Quartet a full quarter-century prior, and integrated jazz bands had existed all through the 1940s and 1950s.〕 ==Early years: 1962–1964== All the members of Booker T and the MG's initially met and played together as part of the house band of Stax Records, providing backing music for a variety of singers such as Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding.〔 In summer 1962, 17-year-old keyboardist Booker T. Jones, 20-year-old guitarist Steve Cropper, bass player Lewie Steinberg, and Al Jackson Jr., a drummer making his debut with the company, were in the Memphis studio to back up former Sun Records star Billy Lee Riley. During downtime, the four started playing around with a bluesy little organ ditty reminiscent of Ray Charles. Jim Stewart, the president of Stax Records, liked what he heard and hit the 'record' button. He liked the finished product enough to want to release it. Cropper remembered a riff that Jones had come up with weeks earlier, and before long they had a second song. Stewart wanted to release the single with the first song, titled "Behave Yourself", as the A-side and the second song as the B-side. Steve Cropper and radio disc jockeys thought otherwise; soon, Stax released Booker T. & the M.G.'s' "Green Onions" backed with "Behave Yourself". In conversation with BBC Radio 2's Johnnie Walker, on his show broadcast on September 7, 2008, Cropper revealed that the record became an instant success when DJ Reuben Washington, at Memphis radio station WLOK, played it four times in succession, this before the track or the band even had an agreed name. The single went to #1 on the US ''Billboard'' R&B chart and #3 on the pop chart. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. It is featured in countless movies/trailers including a pivotal scene in the motion picture ''American Graffiti''. Later in 1962, the band released an all-instrumental album entitled ''Green Onions''. Aside from the title track, a 'sequel' ("Mo' Onions") and "Behave Yourself", the album consisted of instrumental covers of popular hits. Instrumental singles and albums would continue to be issued by Booker T. & The M.G.'s throughout the 1960s. However, although a successful recording combo in their own right, the bulk of the work done by the musicians in the band during this era was as the core of the ''de facto'' house band at Stax Records.〔 Members of Booker T. & The M.G.'s (often, but not always, performing as a unit) performed as the studio backing band for Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Albert King, Johnnie Taylor, Eddie Floyd, The Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett, Delaney & Bonnie and many others in the 1960s.〔 They played on and produced hundreds of records, including classics like "Walking the Dog", "Hold On, I'm Comin'" (on which the multi-instrumentalist Jones played tuba over Donald "Duck" Dunn's bass line), "Soul Man", "Who's Making Love", "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)", and "Try a Little Tenderness", among others. Like their Motown contemporaries the Funk Brothers in Detroit, as a backing band to numerous hits, they are thought to have defined soul music—especially southern soul—where "the groove" was most important. Though it's popularly assumed that Booker T. Jones played on all the above session work, in the mid-1960s Jones was often away from Memphis while studying music full-time at Indiana University. Stax writer/producer Isaac Hayes usually stepped in on the occasions when Jones was unavailable for session work, and on several sessions Jones and Hayes played together with one on organ, the other on piano. However, Hayes was never an official member of the M.G.'s, and Jones played on all the records credited to "Booker T. & The M.G.'s" — with one exception. That exception was the 1965 hit "Boot-Leg", a studio jam recorded with Hayes on keyboards in Jones' place. According to Steve Cropper, the song was recorded with the intention of being released as by The Mar-Keys (another name used to release singles by the Stax house band.) However, as recordings credited to Booker T. & The M.G.'s were meeting with greater commercial success than those credited to The Mar-Keys, the decision was made to credit "Boot-Leg" to Booker T. & The M.G.'s, even though Booker T. himself does not appear on the recording. Individual session credits notwithstanding, what's indisputable is that the Stax house band (Cropper, Jackson, Jones, and Steinberg, along with Cropper's Mar-Keys bandmate, bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn; keyboardist Isaac Hayes; and various horn players, most frequently Floyd Newman, Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love of the Memphis Horns) would set a standard for soul music. Whereas the sign outside Detroit's pop-oriented Motown Records aptly read "Hitsville U.S.A.", the marquee outside of the converted movie theater where Stax was based proclaimed "Soulsville U.S.A.". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Booker T. & the M.G.'s」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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