Booker T. and the MG’s

Booker T. and the MG’s, American band that was among the finest instrumental ensembles in soul music in the 1960s. The original members were organist Booker T. Jones, drummer Al Jackson, Jr., guitarist Steve Cropper, and bassist Lewie Polk Steinberg. Bassist Donald (“Duck”) Dunn replaced Steinberg about 1965.

With their signature tune, “Green Onions” (1962), and other enticing melodies such as “Boot-Leg” (1965), “Hip Hug-Her” (1967), and “Time Is Tight” (1969), Booker T. and the MG’s (for “Memphis Group”) brought the Memphis Sound to millions worldwide. When “Green Onions” became a million-selling hit in 1962, Jones was only 18. Already a veteran of the Memphis scene, he brought together Cropper (who practically resided at Stax Records), Jackson, and Dunn.

United by a passion for soul music, they became the core of a shifting alignment of musicians (including the Mar-Keys, the Bar-Kays, and the Memphis Horns) that acted as the house band for Stax Records, assisting in the creation of countless masterworks by such performers as Otis Redding and Sam and Dave. The group’s racial composition—Jones and Jackson were Black, and Cropper and Dunn were white—mirrored the hopes of the integrationist era. They played together until 1971 and re-formed periodically thereafter, though without the impact they had in the 1960s.

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Booker T. and the MG’s were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. In 2011 the U.S. Library of Congress added “Green Onions” to the National Recording Registry, a list of audio recordings deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”