BOOKER T. & THE M.G.'s: SOUL DRESSING (1965)
1) Soul Dressing; 2)
Tic-Tac-Toe; 3) Big Train; 4) Jellybread; 5) Aw' Mercy; 6) Outrage; 7) Night
Owl Walk; 8) Chinese Checkers; 9) Home Grown; 10) Mercy Mercy; 11) Plum Nellie;
12) Can't Be Still.
Unlike Green
Onions, this one does not seriously pretend to be a genuine, much less
«conceptual» LP — like so many others, it largely consists of a string of
singles recorded by the band from 1963 to 1965, in the process of which they
eventually lost original bass player Lewie Steinberg and replaced him with
Donald ʽDuckʼ Dunn, thus completing the «classic» Stax lineup, responsible for
so much of that mid-to-late 1960s Atlantic greatness. On the other hand, also
unlike Green Onions, Soul Dressing largely consists of
original compositions — with the exception of Don Covay's ʽMercy Mercyʼ, all
the songs are now credited to the band members.
The question of originality does not exactly
disappear, since many of the compositions sound like variations on all too
familiar themes (ʽBig Trainʼ = Howlin' Wolf's ʽLittle Babyʼ, to name but one),
including some of their own (ʽJellybreadʼ, for instance, recycles the main organ
groove of ʽGreen Onionsʼ once too many), but in any case, this is not a very
relevant issue for the boys, whose goal was never to push forward musical
boundaries in blinding flashes of
inspiration, but to make professional, reliable, cool-sounding mini-soundtracks
to stimulate the body without insulting the mind. To that end, Soul Dressing is just the right kind of
dressing, as would be many of its follow-ups.
And it's not as if there weren't lots of cute minor
touches that keep reminding us — these guys had, on the average, one notch more
of class than most competition. There's the tricky, confusing percussion groove
on ʽTic-Tac-Toeʼ, for instance, stuck somewhere in between regular rock'n'roll
and syncopated funk — and they also experiment with fade-outs, bringing the
tune back for an extra thirty seconds out of nowhere even as you think it was
over all too quickly. There's ʽChinese Checkersʼ, whose main organ/guitar riff
builds on the already mentioned ʽMercy Mercyʼ, but competes for attention with
Hugh Masekela-style horns, and plays on the title by having somebody cue Booker
T. for his electric piano solo with a juicy "your move!"
And then there's ʽPlum Nellieʼ, where they
finally succeed in coming up with something just as gritty and threatening as
ʽGreen Onionsʼ, even if this time they have to abandon «minimalism» and add a
brash brass part to the recording, as well as have Steve Cropper intersperse
his concise riffage with more complex soloing techniques (trills,
ʽMisirlouʼ-style surf guitar passages, etc. — no feedback, though: for all
their experimentation, these guys were «clean» as a whistle). A track as sharp
and crisp as that could not be forgotten, and, in fact, the Small Faces later
covered it, probably out of reluctance to be good lads and play the usual
ʽGreen Onionsʼ like everybody else. Now those
guys threw in quite a bit of juicy feedback, though — throwing out the horns
and probably wrecking a complete drum kit in the process. Not sure if Booker T.
would have appreciated that. Too much ruckus and chaos.
Although some of the tracks could probably be
labelled as «filler» if we were in the mood for labelling, the M.G.'s in their
prime were always a delight to hear, and even if the basic grooves are often
similar, neither Booker T. nor Steve Cropper ever play the same solo twice; also,
proceedings are kept at a certain level of diversity, alternating between
strict blues, poppier blues, gospellier blues (by the way, on a random note —
Ray Manzarek's organ solo on ʽLight My Fireʼ owes quite a bit to ʽSoul
Dressingʼ, doesn't it?), and midnight jazz (ʽNight Owl Walkʼ, which is all soft
and hushed and premonition-filled, but just as you succeed in getting lulled,
they pull you out with a stop-and-start punchline — the classic sense-baiter).
All the goals here being fairly humble, and all of them being met with the
usual touch of class, I see no reason not to give Soul Dressing a proper thumbs up rating. At the very least, you simply won't be getting this kind of guitar and
organ solos on the absolute majority of vocal R&B records of that time —
reason enough to be interested in the M.G.'s on their own terms.
Booker T & the MG's were a one-hit wonder. Too much of their material is derivative of "Green Onions".
ReplyDeleteJohn, your comment is silly on a number of levels.
ReplyDelete