Booker T & The M.G.’S
Three issues back, in Rolling Stone No. 16, we ran an extensive interview with one of the top Memphis bands, Stax recording artists Booker T. and the MG’s. It was so extensive, in fact, that there wasn’t room for all of it in that issue.
As promised, we are running the remainder. Guitarist Steve Cropper, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Duck Dunn comment on selected tracks. Here, then, is a musician’s eye view.
“DRIVING WHEEL”
JUNIOR PARKER
Al: What can you say about a tune like that? It’s there, all the ingredients are there. Junior is not an excitable singer. That’s a good piece of material, that’s a perfect tune. We need more tunes like that. I’d like to get a hold of more material like that. That’s blues. I believe Wayne Bennett is on guitar and it sounds as though he is playing it at another speed. Like he recorded by himself, but he is really at another speed or maybe he’s just that fast. I’ve only seen him a couple of times and he’s a groovy guitar player. The rhythm is there, the arrangement is there, the lyrics are there and so is Junior. Beautiful.
Steve: That’s the thing that relaxes you, the blues. When you run across a song that great it really turns you on. There’s nothing bad you can say about that kind of music. The worst mistake in life would still be a smash record.
Duck: You know, it’s a funny thing, they say you can dress up, put on your formals and all that, and go to a party and about 7:00 at night, when you get to the party you’ll find real nice music and along about 11:00 or 12:00, when things start getting dry, they stop and they start putting on the blues.
Steve: They’ve got to because that’s when they start becoming themselves. The whole world puts on an act until they get intoxicated and that’s the time they really become themselves and that’s where it’s at.
“LOVE IS LIKE AN ITCHING IN MY HEART”
THE SUPREMES
Duck: They keep getting back to that Motown bass player, don’t they? You know, I don’t know. That’s not the best thing I’ve ever heard Diana Ross and the Supremes do. I don’t like what they’re doing now either, but the old stuff I dig. Not so far back as “Baby Love” or any of that. Yeah, I did like “Baby Love.” I think this one was too fast. They played it well but they just didn’t have that, that melody to it that their other songs used to have, sing-along type things.
Diana Ross has got something in her voice though that just seems to be –– well, she just appeals to me, not in a particular name, she sings a little . . .
Al: She stresses sex in her voice.
Steve: But it’s natural though.
Al: Yeah, the groove was there, you know, the same four stomp beat. It seemed to have been over-arranged at points and then while I waited for her to really say something, it was the baritone that took the solo which said nothing to me. I would rather have heard an ensemble, or some other instruments there, because it just laid there, it didn’t really say anything. It didn’t leave me with anything. The melody of the tune was running so, I don’t know what she said.
Steve: Was that a single? Let me make this comment: Whoever mixed the stereo killed the record. I just now was thinking about “Itching In My Heart,” some of the lyrics. I was trying to pick out what I heard in the song lyric-wise and then I recalled that was a single record. I didn’t get that in the mix because they completely subdued every lyric in the whole song and the melody too.
Whoever mixed the stereo forgot that there was a lead singer on the track. It’s just all music; it was beat from the word go, a constant stomp beat. The record did not sound that way, it had much more to offer, and the single, like Duck said, “let me sing along,” but the sing-along was not mixed into that record like it is on a single.
Jann: I want to get back to what Al said just a minute ago. You were talking about Diana Ross’s voice being sexy and in that song I recall the parts where she says in each chorus, “love is like an itching in my heart,” and then she goes and “baby I can’t scratch it.” That’s where she really gets into it, right there.
Al: Right!
Steve: Maybe I’m sitting in the wrong part of the room, I heard that but it was so underneath.
Al: It’s so bare and –– like I don’t remember the single but from hearing the stereo, they lost it somewhere in the mix. Like the drums are too high. It’s a standard out there, he’s only playing a stomp beat and it’s there from beginning to end. But where is Diana? I can get her in spots like the “itch” part, but I don’t really get a message there.
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