Time Is Tight

by Booker T. Jones

  On my next recording session, I didn’t get to play the simple blues changes that were going through my mind, and I didn’t get to formally meet Prince Conley even though we were in the same room. He was stationed near the top of the theater behind a baffle, and I was way down at the bottom in front of the control room. What I remember most about the session was that I was playing hooky from school and that it would pay me all of fifteen dollars!

  I was enthralled listening to the song, and when time came to play, I wasn’t ready. As if someone else was going to play the solo. But I quickly got my act together and made the fastest fifteen dollars I ever was paid in my life.

  I was still a recording neophyte. I should have been flattered, but I didn’t understand why they didn’t want me to play in the body of the song, only perform the solo, and no more. It seemed strange to me then, but in retrospect I realize I was given a premier spot to play. The song was “I’m Going Home” by Prince Conley, which Charlie Musselwhite later told me was regarded as an unsung gem by blues pundits. It has been called a “cryptic pearl” by some soul music stalkers and diggers.

  MEMPHIS—1962—7

  For years, most Sundays, in the morning, I would be in church…without a doubt. Since I started working at Stax, however, that pattern started to fall off, and it felt strange. We were the only people in town who weren’t in church—and we should have been! There were no cars on the street, and there was a kind of lonely, hollow feeling to the neighborhood around the studio. The record shop was open, but it seemed sacrilegious. Satellite had become my new priority, and my parents had given it their blessing, as had everyone in the community who had heard the music we’d been making.

  On one Sunday afternoon in 1962, Billy Lee Riley packed up and left the studio. Riley was an ex–Sun Records rockabilly artist who was trying to revive his career. After he left, the four musicians who had been hired to play on his session were free to utilize the recording studio for the rest of the afternoon. Al Jackson Jr. was on drums, Lewie Steinberg on bass, Steve Cropper on guitar, and me on Hammond M-3 organ.

  I started picking out a phrase on the piano that I had been playing at a club out on Parkway with my little combo with Jerome Miller on drums and Errol Thomas on bass. I was playing the melody on the organ. It was like I was subconsciously talking with my fingers when playing the melody or solo line. I didn’t really have much awareness of what was going on; it was very relaxed. The song was a slow blues that I made up trying to imitate Ray Charles’s organ style. The others joined in, and Jim Stewart hit the record button.

  As we played, I really liked the sound the organ was putting out. It was low and gritty coming out of the speaker between my legs. I hadn’t played this organ very much, just once before on the William Bell session, where I used mostly high vibrato sounds in answer to his vocal phrases. I never knew you could make an organ sound like this before. It was so funky, so growly, and yet so clean and clear. Lewie started a walking bass line, just like he did in the clubs, and Steve started playing guitar chinks on the backbeat with Al’s snare. It started to flow and feel good.

  Jim thought the cut turned out great. So much so that he wanted to put it out as a single. All agreed. But this new 45-rpm single record, “Behave Yourself,” as named by Jim’s sister, Mrs. Axton, needed a B side. Cropper suggested I show them my other song. “Booker, what’s that little tune you’ve been playing on piano?”

  In my music theory class with Mr. Pender, I thought, What if the contrapuntal rules applied to a twelve-bar blues pattern? What if the bottom bass note went up while the top note of the triad went down, like in the Bach fugues and cantatas? Sitting at my mother’s piano at home, I had played F, A flat, B flat, F—using the contrapuntal chord triad structural rules from eighteenth-century Baroque Bach. A little swing and blues changes, and the song was born.

  I moved from the piano to the Hammond, since I had played it on the previous song. Jim Stewart hit the record button.

  During this second recording, I started speaking on the keyboard with my right hand—a simple musical exposition—a sentence in sparse musical notes. It became the first solo of the song. Then I returned to the original twelve-bar pattern to use as accompaniment and let Steve have a guitar solo. He played an aggressive, simple exposition also—so perfect! All the while Lewie and Al laid down a relentless rhythm based on the original phrase.

  Al Jackson’s drums were the cohesive element. Lewie’s bass and Steve’s guitar played the deceptively simple rhythm with a relaxed magic that created a new sound and a new groove that became one of the first instances of the Memphis sound.

  We finished the cut, and everyone rushed into the control room, excited to hear what we had done!

  When Lewie Steinberg heard the playback, he said, “Man, that’s so funky it smells like onions! Funky onions! We oughta name it ‘Funky Onions’!” Mrs. Axton came back to the studio, heard the playback and the proposed title, and exclaimed, “You can’t name a song ‘Funky Onions’ in this day and time; why not call it ‘Green Onions’?” Everyone agreed.

  When time came to give the record an artist name, Al Jackson spoke up.

  “We gotta call the group Booker T. and…” He looked out the back window at Chips Moman’s British Leyland MG parked out in the lot. “The MGs! That’s it—Booker T. and the MGs!”

  With my high school diploma, I was free as a bird, about to make a beeline for college. My newfound knowledge of music was a double-sided coin: preparing me for the tasks ahead at Indiana while also establishing a bond with Memphis as a more sophisticated, capable songwriter, session man, and producer. So in reality, a continuing link was constructed between Indiana and Memphis.

  But before I bade farewell to Memphis, there was one more significant person I had to meet.

  Chapter 7

  These Arms of Mine

  MEMPHIS—Summer 1962—12

  I stepped outside the studio to get some air and spotted a big man gently and meticulously unloading suitcases and instruments onto the street from a vehicle parked at the curb. When I was ready to go back in, I took my seat at the organ to find the session winding to a close.

  As I prepared to go, a man sat down right next to me and started singing “These Arms of Mine.” It was the guy who had been unloading all the luggage and instruments. He was the driver and gofer for the next band setting up in the studio, Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers, a group from Georgia. Although I hadn’t played a note on the organ, the driver, whose named turned out to be Otis, started in right on key in B flat, as if he had perfect pitch. I knew he was special.

  Instantly, I got lost in the emotion of the song, being that close to his voice and him emoting like he did, similar to what happened when I played for Mahalia Jackson. I came to myself and started playing chords in B flat. All dictated by his voice. He had an intuitive understanding of music. Beyond the limits of classroom education. It was a moment so colorful that I want to paint it brown for earthy. That’s the color that comes to mind when I remember those moments.

  Then, I had to go. I hadn’t counted on meeting a man of such musical sensibilities that he would change my life. I had a regular gig at the Flamingo Room, a commitment I had sacrificed to obtain, so I got up to leave. I had Otis Redding’s emotional, anxiety-filled, angst-ridden pleadings still in my head, and my heart. I had made a new friend. He was twenty, and I was seventeen.

  Regardless of age, though, none of the singers I worked with on Beale or heard on the radio sang with the emotional power or had the melisma of Otis Redding. To have a musical force that strong and so physically close affected me. There was just so much feeling and power in his delivery.

  Otis’s heartfelt approach fit right in with our simple, no-frills regimen. I walked to my car, pulled myself in, and drove to Beale and Hernando and stepped onstage. But I was different now.

  Meanwhile, Otis drove back to Georgia as he had driven to Memphis, a hired hand, but he had moved from the back seat to the driver’s sea
t, so to speak.

  MEMPHIS to BLOOMINGTON—August 1962—3

  I pointed my car in a different direction. It was a route I came to know like the back of my hand. Every turn, every hill, every stretch. I also knew all the farmhouses, all the bridges, but not the hotels. I never stopped. Always the four-hundred-mile stretch, pulling over only for gas.

  First by Greyhound bus, then by copying the route in a series of cars I drove. Starting with my little ’61 Ford Fairlane, every Buick my dad owned, and ending with my own ’66 Buick Special. The same road that took me to school as a boy, Porter Junior High, B. T. Washington, and church, Mt. Olive, took me to my new school, Indiana University. Wellington turned into Thomas Street and headed north toward Kentucky.

  I drove that route so often that I stopped looking at the familiar waypoints: Currie’s Club Tropicana, Millington Air Force Base. And as I paid less attention to the scenery, more music began floating into my mind. One song after the other. “Soul Dressing,” “I Forgot to Be Your Lover.” Whatever the muse decided to serve up. By the time I got to Bloomington, I had a plethora of musical ideas that had accumulated from the trip.

  I stayed true to the Greyhound bus route because it was open twenty-four hours and I could fudge a cheap meal by ordering toast and filling the two slices with jelly or mayonnaise from the counter. I knew every Greyhound stop and station—Millington, Covington, Ripley, and Dyersburg in Tennessee were stops. The next station was Paducah in Kentucky. I would try to time my appetite to be hungry when I got to a station.

  BLOOMINGTON, IN—Fall 1962—7

  No sooner had I set foot on the Bloomington campus than I got a call from Arne, leader of Arnie and the Soul Brothers. Ironically, Arne was Jewish, but his band was called the Soul Brothers. Arne had the fraternity party scene on lockdown at IU, and I was immediately in the band. There was Stan on sax, Lawrence on trumpet, Bob on drums, me on keys, and Arne on guitar.

  The group was not the MGs musically but was equal to some other bands I had played with in Memphis. They were well established on campus, playing a lot of gigs. And it was quick, easy money that really helped with tuition and expenses. “Green Onions” sounded different with Arne’s group. No one would ever play it like the MGs. Other songs, covers of the day, were fun with Arne’s band.

  I was moved by the historic old campus and startled by the modern architecture of Teter Quadrangle, where I stopped to drop my bags and take a quick peek at my room. I opened the door and was greeted by the oddest character. He looked at me as though I had invaded his private sanctuary. Big, surprised eyes told me I had the key to the wrong room. As far as I knew, the dorms tended to pair students of similar race, and my new roommate appeared never to have laid eyes on skin black as mine. I for one had never laid eyes on skin white as his, so the mistake was verified without a word. Mingling races was OK with me, since I had associated with whites at Stax in Memphis.

  He was studying at his desk by the door, glaring at me through huge, thick eyeglasses. He was dark-haired and studious, a collared shirt and open IU sweater draping his thin frame. The next second, I was distracted. My gaze was diverted to the large window on the other side of the small room, cracked slightly open at the top. Inserted into the window from outside the room was a thick black insulated wire that stretched out and extended across the middle of the room, ending underneath my new roommate’s desk.

  This spectacle stopped me in my tracks. With my bags still in the hallway, I found the nearest exit to the street. I scanned the building and located my room. Sure enough, there was a black wire stretched all the way over and across the access road from Teter Quadrangle to Wright Quadrangle, a large dorm, up to a room on the fourth floor. Cars and trucks were driving underneath it. Unbelievable.

  I had been paired with an inventive, unusual young man who had rigged some kind of communication network with an equally unusual student. I was sure we were mismatched. I went straight to the resident counselor, leaving my bags in the hall and my car on the access road. Did she know who I had been assigned as a roommate? Did she know him? Had she met him? Was he clinically insane, and had I been paired with him because no one else would room with him? Had she seen the wire? The counselor gave me a look that said there was no hope. All the rooms were assigned. Unless I wanted to try for a hotel in town. First day on campus. Frankly, I was probably spoiled. My parents had indulged me with my own room all my life, and I wasn’t looking forward to sharing such a small space with a deranged roommate.

  A number of weeks passed. I spent all my time outside the room, studying, meeting new people, and hanging out in the dorm’s common room. I shared the lounge’s piano with a fellow from South Bend, Indiana, named Dick Short. Sleeping was the only activity I did in my room, and for a while my roommate and I managed not to step on each other’s toes. Or wires.

  At last the counselor informed me of an opportunity to move to another room. I accepted without any questions or qualifications. My new roommate also had strange habits. Every night he used massive amounts of skin care products with scents so strong that the smell became unbearable. He had a mirror at his desk and sat for hours primping his face and eyes, gussying up his skin with cleaners and oils. We had a distant relationship. Polite and respectful, but we didn’t speak much. At night, I came to the room in my pj’s and robe from the shower and climbed into the top bunk, leaving him to sit with his cosmetics.

  MUSIC BUILDING, IU CAMPUS—1962—1

  My trip to the music building was a much better experience. It was a circular structure with floors and floors of practice rooms and a huge music library underneath, which was available on a twenty-four-hour basis. In other words, heaven on earth. My first instructor, Buddy Baker, was an angel on earth. A young man just starting a family, he was the protégé of the famous Professor Thomas Beversdorf, the head of Indiana’s trombone faculty. Walking into Buddy’s office made me feel so comfortable, I knew I had arrived and the next four years were going to be great. He showed me pictures of his wife and children, and I too fell in love with them. He handled the photos with so much care, I felt like it was my family too.

  Getting serious, Mr. Baker picked up a trombone and instructed me to get mine. The training was going to be rigorous. I was doing many things incorrectly, but time would fix them. Mainly, I had to develop what Buddy called an embouchure, strength in the muscles surrounding the upper and lower lips, so for days I was walking around looking like an idiot with my lips pursed all the time.

  For no reason, I took a detour leaving the music building—wandering the campus. Thought I might take a walk down East Seventh Street to downtown Bloomington. There was an inconspicuous dark brown door down the steps leading to a side entrance to the huge auditorium in the middle of the campus. Boldly, I opened the door and went inside. There were rows of empty chairs behind music stands facing a conductor’s podium. I should have read the campus map.

  I had found the band room under the auditorium. I was so not ready for what was ahead. Dr. Ronald Gregory was like the Otis Redding of Indiana University, except he had a cadre of little Dr. Gregorys arrive at school early to whip the band into shape before he appeared. In shape we got, and appear he did.

  I swear, we were in better shape than the football team (who were the only other folks to arrive on campus two weeks early). The drills started early in the morning. On the football field, with no instruments. It took me a while. All the freshmen were sucking wind. Aren’t we going to play music? Yes, but not until we were able to pull our knees up to our chests as we marched across the field at a breakneck cadence, at the same time staying in line and paying attention for hours.

  Days later we sat down in the band room with our instruments to learn the music with the assistant director. It was a relief just to be sitting down.

  Dr. Gregory appeared, smartly dressed and smiling. Looking everyone in the eye, expecting everything to be perfect, first time. When disappointed, Dr. Gregory tended to look away, which felt worse to us than gettin
g chewed out by his assistants. The band sounded incredible on and off the field.

  After football season, we became a concert band, and I had some of the best musical experiences of my life under the direction of Dr. Ronald Gregory. Symphonic music, operatic music, and finally, big band jazz, my favorite. I was fortunate to play trombone in the jazz band alongside talents like Randy Brecker (trumpet) and Jamey Aebersold (sax). Many of the charts were by David Baker, Indiana’s famous jazz trombonist/cellist/professor.

  Jazz band rehearsals and classes were set at reasonable hours—2:40 in the afternoon and such, unlike music theory class times.

  I had music theory class at seven in the morning. Five days a week. Getting up that early was crazy. Since I was in tenth grade, my shift at the clubs had been 10:00 p.m.–4:00 a.m., Thursday through Monday, so my body clock was that of a night owl. And now, getting up before dawn, I had to walk, sometimes through the snow, to get to the building. You couldn’t be late because they were blind drills. The instructors would sit behind an upright piano and play something, and you had to write it down. If you were late, you missed out and got an F or a D. You couldn’t get a friend to tape-record it for you. This was the requirement for the bachelor of music education degree I was seeking.

  The program was so challenging and grueling that you could be assured if you ever met someone who graduated and got the music degree from Indiana, they were likely to be a cut above the field.

  MEMPHIS—Fall 1962—7

  One of the first sessions I played as I began commuting to Memphis was William Bell’s “Any Other Way.” I played piano, widely spaced chords that William answered with his lyrical phrases. The chords were evocative of those I had learned listening to Horace Silver play piano. “Please Help Me, I’m Falling” was William’s cover of the Hank Locklin country song, which featured a Floyd Kramer–style high piano part. On William’s record, I played organ, and the fills were reminiscent of Floyd Kramer.