Time Is Tight

by Booker T. Jones

  It would be difficult for someone who didn’t have musical training and education to appreciate the full value they afforded me. I gained the knowledge, the confidence, and the security that came with it. I acquired the ability to transcribe music and musical textures to a written score. By virtue of my proficiency on, and knowledge of, the ranges and capabilities of brass, strings, and woodwind instruments, I became a regular arranger at Stax, to my benefit and others’. Knowing the history of music made me more capable of creating future music. That’s the value of studying anything.

  MEMPHIS—1966—2

  “Sad songs is all he know, y’all.” Although the tune was not his biggest hit, I feel that “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)” is the one that captured the true essence of Otis Redding. I mimicked his vocal on the piano, playing along with a dancing rhythm of thirds up high on the keyboard, practically dancing at the piano myself. The dichotomy in Otis’s music and what we were doing at Stax was never more apparent than on this session—playing sad music to make us happy. Everybody had a ball that day.

  In an effort to make Otis’s star even brighter, Phil Walden, his manager, sought a way to get Otis on the big TV shows and into the big nightclubs. He suggested Otis try recording “Try a Little Tenderness.” I was surprised, but the inventiveness of the idea piqued my interest.

  “Try a Little Tenderness” was proven material, and with the musicians’ help, Otis managed to turn the lyric into a truly powerful, honest exhortation as to how to treat a lady. On the first run-through, like a good theory student, I played a leading, descending piano run down to an A minor chord on each verse in the eighth and ninth bars, and Otis waited each time for me to do that before he whispered the lyric.

  As always, an air of experimentation pervaded the first run-through, but quickly, ingeniously, Al began pecking rim shots quietly. I probably looked up at him like he was crazy at first but soon realized those taps were in rhythm and possibly the precursor of something more exciting to come. Never underestimate the creativity of Al Jackson.

  Sure enough, he played a big fill leading into the first turn, and I hit a B in the left hand, an inversion leading to the E7 turn, and instantly we had a turn, a build that was about to explode into something. Otis stomped out from behind the vocal booth into the middle of the room.

  Otis said, “You got ta!” (Now marching, left, right.) “Squeeze her! Tease her!” (Full-out stomping, arms flailing, waving side to side.) “Never leave her!” Otis jumped in front of the drums and glared at Al. Al played a fill, inciting the band to break. The band broke. (Silence.) Al glared playfully at Otis.

  He responded: “Nigh, nigh, nigh! Nigh, nigh, nigh! Nigh, nigh, nigh! Try a little…tenderness!” Otis shouted.

  We all hit the downbeat together.

  It was a release. A musical explosion.

  Then, we walked the chords down, back down, to the same place as the first turn, and it became apparent it was going to happen again!

  “Nigh, nigh, nigh—Nigh, nigh, nigh!”

  The tension built again. Al stood up.

  And again, I played the leading, descending piano run down to the A minor chord, and we were off! This time everybody but Al leaned hard on the backbeat, playing the upward chord progression.

  On the way up, Otis interjected, asserted, and demanded, “You got ta…squeeze her!” Pause. “Tease her!” Pause. “Nigh, nigh, nigh—Nigh, nigh, nigh! Try a little—”

  When we got to the top, another explosion!

  “Tenderness!”

  This time Al was standing up at the drums, banging out snare hits, answering Otis’s exhortations. We used four beats of G, four beats of F, and two bars of E7 to bring us down from our high, but we had reached the zenith, we were at the top, there was no denying that because we felt the exhilaration. And as luck would have it, tape had been rolling the whole time. The whole time! Jim was recording us!

  I had waited seven years to see this expression on Jim Stewart’s face. It was possible to satisfy this man, a notion we doubted from time to time. He loved it. He was moved.

  Chapter 11

  Born Under a Bad Sign

  MEMPHIS—Spring 1968—2

  Writing the guitar part for Eddie Floyd’s “Big Bird,” I was visualizing. Trying to simulate the action of the wings on a big jet when they cut the first piece of air on takeoff. How that first sliver becomes a slightly larger stream that pokes over the wing, and finally under the wing, until a vortex develops with such force that the heavy body of the big jet comes into view and lifts off the ground into flight.

  I started picking the pattern on an E on the B string with my third finger, in the fifth position, then added the open E top string into the pattern so as to have two E strings playing together. Moving to the seventh position, I kept the picking pattern on three strings simultaneously to form a D chord with the top E still suspended. Then, a C triad in that same position, moving to an A7 chord without the bass note.

  Finally, for the part where the big 747 lifts off the ground, I played four beats each of E, D, C, and A, then the E rhythm pattern for four bars.

  Eddie waited patiently for all this introduction to happen, dancing expectantly behind the vocal booth. After we took off, he starting singing, “Open up the sky! ’Cause I’m comin’ up to you!” Are we still at Stax? Is this Detroit? Isn’t this a little esoteric? Mystical? Symbolic? Yes, to all. We had moved into the Age of Aquarius, and Eddie was right there with me, even when I moved to California and started recording at Leon Russell’s house, where we wrote and recorded “California Girl” and “Never Found a Girl” with Leon’s crew. Eddie was the only one willing to join me in LA.

  In Memphis, there was subtle, and not-so-subtle, pressure to stick with keyboards. Even so, I never gave up my Sears Silvertone guitar. It was second nature to me.

  MEMPHIS—Fall 1966—9

  One day I arrived at my office at Stax to find a letter waiting for me on my desk. It was from a woman named Anne. The handwriting was big, elaborate, and ornate. In the letter, she simply said, “Dear Booker T., Please come f—k me.” She signed her name and wrote her phone number.

  My girlfriend was out of town, and my wife was mad at me. What could I do? I phoned Anne. She spoke in a low, clear, deliberate voice. She lived out in Douglas. I thought I had seen her before, walking down the street near the Sears store. I told my wife I had to work late and went to Anne’s house.

  She had huge brown eyes, so big that it took an extra second for her to blink. Short hair and long, slim legs. She drank scotch, but I never saw her drunk. Her mother peeked her head in for a quick hello, then retired to the next room. It was late, we had barely met, and Anne took me on the couch in her foyer with her parents in the next room.

  It did not seem to bother her that they were so close, because this happened many times. They never intruded, or maybe they weren’t there; I’m not sure.

  Anne told me not to hurt her. I did. I went back to my girlfriend, and Anne slapped me hard against the face when she found out. She was irresistibly beautiful, with the large eyes and a long, sensual nose. I saw her until we realized we would destroy each other, and then we kept our distance.

  After Gigi moved to Memphis, during the day, we went our own ways, but we slept in the same house. The question became not if I was going to bring dinner home after I left the studio but what barbeque place I was going to get it from. Blacks weren’t allowed inside legendary restaurants like the Rendezvous, but it didn’t matter because blacks and whites considered Culpepper’s, on the south side, unbeatable in the barbeque realm. The fact that it was fifteen blocks out of my way didn’t stop Gigi from insisting our plates come from there. Unlike the great barbeque place on South Parkway, Culpepper’s plates were five or six large ribs pasted with their proprietary sauce, five slices of bread, and a small helping of slaw. The only healthy takeout for blacks came from the Four-Way Grill on Mississippi, routinely consisting of fried chicken, collard greens, yams, corn on the cob, and co
rnbread.

  We both had dependencies. Mine were music and women. Gigi’s were, well, I wasn’t certain. Definitely alcohol.

  After a short road trip, I was somewhat taken aback to find Gigi had installed a well-stocked bar in one corner of our rumpus room. I had a scotch or a beer every now and then but was nowhere near a serious drinker and hadn’t known that Gigi was. Her father and his brothers, however, had a long history of alcohol abuse. She said she had some friends over “now and again” who “liked to have a drink or two.” What I was unaware of was that there were parties at my house when I was at the studio or at the Lorraine Motel.

  I guess I was a knucklehead.

  As a kid in Memphis, my friends and I had fun doing “the hambone,” a leg/knee-slapping dance resembling a stomp to the rhythm of a mouth harp, or harmonica. It was common for me to have one in my pocket from the time I was around seven.

  One day at Stax, our young protégés, the Bar-Kays, had just finished “Soul Finger” and needed something to back it with. I happened to have my harmonica and pulled it out of my pocket, playing a melody to one of their rhythms. They decided to mike my harp, and the tune became a lively dance stomp, “Knucklehead.”

  MEMPHIS—Spring 1967—7

  I became a full-time Stax employee. The studio was home.

  I was so heavily influenced by Dave “Baby” Cortez. “Booker-Loo” was evidence of that. The B-3 organ, so flexible, could be used to produce sounds of joy or sadness. Cortez’s song “The Happy Organ” presented the Hammond in the happy category. My main influences, Jimmy Smith and Bill Doggett, demonstrated the serious side of the instrument. I guess I’ve pictured myself on both sides of the coin.

  The title “Booker-Loo” came from Al Jackson’s play on words with the boogaloo dance craze, featuring a similar tempo.

  The whole thing started out with an inverted drum beat. Just the opposite of how you think the drums should go. Then, Duck hit the dancing bass line, with Steve providing chinks on the backbeats.

  For the melody, I reached up midway high on the swell manual for a comfortable first inversion of the D chord, while the left hand kept the bass pattern and my body moving. Duck doubled what I played on my left hand. Instead of usual twelve-bar blues changes, I laid the song out on a twenty-bar pattern in the key of D. We played a full eight bars on the first D. The first change went down to the major sixth chord (B flat) for four bars rather than up to the four as in blues, then back to D for four more. For the turn, it was back to the major sixth, then down to the four chord, finally settling back home for a break on the D and a two-bar drum fill that led us into the guitar solo.

  I dropped down to the lower manual to play a percussive rhythm behind the solo. Steve did his simple, one-note dancing thing, like he was balancing up on a tightwire with his arms stretched out for balance. He came down a little bit for the B-flat section, then it was right back up there again when we got to the second set of D chords.

  In the funky, easy key of C, “My Sweet Potato” is an example of the Ramsey Lewis influence on me. Not only did Ramsey take over my piano psyche, he stole my drummer, Maurice White. I wasn’t bitter, but I did listen to the Young-Holt Trio instead of Ramsey sometimes.

  All three of the other MGs were as influenced by current bands as I was by the Young-Holt Trio. In particular, Jackson, Dunn, and Cropper loved New York’s Young Rascals, whose “Groovin’” rivaled Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” the other popular song that screams The Big Apple! Booker T. & the MGs’ “Groovin’” is a laid-back instrumental cover of the Rascals’ song.

  When we recorded the tune, I imagined myself in a top-down convertible, cruisin’ on a crowded New York avenue on a warm Sunday afternoon, pretty girl sitting snuggly close, with nowhere to be and no time to be there, and the Rascals’ cut playing on big interior car speakers.

  Multitrack recording made it possible for me to put old-school-style piano triplets down before laying down the melody on the B-3.

  EUROPE—Spring 1967—1

  Rushed visits to Lanksy Brothers to have suits tailor-made for the European tour was the first time any attention was paid to what we would wear.

  We landed in England. How could this be? Me at such a young age and this so, so foreign land feeling so familiar so soon? The home of Chaucer, Shakespeare, old lore, and legend. But it was real; looking out the window, I saw the countryside, and the wheels underneath the big jet touched the ground.

  It was an event that would repeat itself many times in the years to come, each with that same eerie, familiar feeling, but with me older only.

  I was traveling to meet my unexpected extended family. Fans I would come to see for many years. Were they coming to see me or I to see them? They started bringing their children to the concerts, and all the things that can come between people who have something in common started cropping up. Language, distance.

  They drove and drove. Promoters drove up ticket prices. But to this day we value one another. Overcome the obstacles and grow old together, with the music. Old and new—now we email, call one another by name, and wait. Until I once again…land in England.

  Touring Europe with Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Eddie Floyd, and Arthur Conley, we acquired a loyal group, mostly girls, who would follow us from city to city, hotel to hotel. One particular groupie, Rubie Cowell, was homosexual, and her nickname was “the Vamp.” She was thin, with short blonde hair and sharp features.

  Rubie and I became friends. She usually dressed in black masculine clothes and loved the long thin silk socks I wore, which were not available in London. I gave her several pairs from my suitcase. Rubie’s best friend was a girl named Nicky. Rubie introduced me to Nicky one night at a club, and I started seeing her not long after the tour began.

  One night when the entourage was at a club in London, Rubie was with a beautiful Alaskan girl named Chaya. On the dance floor, Chaya was wearing a primitive-looking short coat with a fur lining around the neck. Her miniskirt was London-era short, and her shoes were f—k-me shoes. Being homosexual, Rubie couldn’t get on the dance floor with Chaya, even though they came together.

  Rubie noticed me looking at Chaya as we were dancing. When we left the club, standing outside on the street waiting for our taxis, Rubie, standing to my left, balled her fist and decked me on the left side of my chin, right there on the street. Everyone, including me, was surprised. But everyone had seen me eyeing Chaya. She was attractive to all the guys, but Rubie made an example out of me.

  Rubie and I stayed friends, and I kept my distance from Chaya.

  Settling in for a considerable stay in London for rehearsals, London’s trendy Mayfair Hotel on Stratton Street in Chelsea became our home away from home.

  Because the presumptuous maids at the Mayfair made a habit of barging in without knocking, my roommate, Al Jackson, and I took to the habit of sleeping nude with no covers. When the maids burst in, they had a full-on view of both of us. After a few days of this, the intrusions stopped.

  SHEFFIELD, ENGLAND—1967—4

  There was a knock on the door at 3:00 a.m. Then, the hotel night clerk and the security guard used the house key to let themselves into the room. My English girlfriend pulled the sheet up over her when the bright ceiling light came on. We were told to pack our things and leave the hotel—immediately.

  The officious clerk made no pretense of believing the room empty, as nothing would have prevented the cagey manager from visually confirming the white skin of the woman in my bed. Neither was there any duplicity concerning the cause, or justification for, our expulsion in the middle of the night.

  Out on the cold English street with our suitcases, we walked until we found a fish-and-chips restaurant where we could at least sit inside to wait out the rest of the dark morning. We ordered fish and chips over and over again until time to walk back to the hotel to board the bus and rejoin the tour for the ride to the next town.

  COPENHAGEN—1967—9

  As this particular mix of whiskies playe
d in my stomach, I don’t remember feeling much more than the sting of the slap her large Nordic hand made on the side of my face. The large Danish blonde was angry with me as she lay in my small hotel bed because I was unable to get it up in my inebriated state.

  This was the first and the last time I was ever drunk in my life, having imbibed at the kickoff party for the Stax-Volt tour of Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. Choosing from the variety of liquors available, I partook of all of them before I ended up in my room with the beautiful fair-haired European version of an Amazon. As it turned out, she would never get to taste my southern delights because my drunken stupor lasted a full five days—even without another drink.

  Bandmates, tour managers, and friends took turns bringing food to my room and urging me to eat at the smorgasbords, hoping I would get sober enough to play the organ at the big concert on Friday night.

  We were onstage playing “Green Onions” when I sobered up.

  Oh my God! Where are we in this song? How much have I played? Does it sound all right? How did I ever play it this far? Stop thinking about that, and concentrate on the fact that this arena is full of people listening!

  All those thoughts raced through my mind, which had not done much thinking the past week, as the bright lights produced a black-and-white glare in my eyes.

  PARIS—1967—5

  On my first trip to Paris, Annika Sole was waiting for me at the airport. It was like she had picked me out of a lineup and had chosen me. She grabbed my arm and stayed with me the whole time I was in France. She must have been the most beautiful girl in Paris.