The Road from Memphis starts with a young Booker T. Jones hauling his stack of newspapers to Phineas Newborn s front yard where, while folding them for his after-school delivery route, he could listen to the jazz great practice piano. It ends with Booker and The Roots roaring through a set of both timeless and contemporary originals (and propulsive covers of Gnarls Barkley s "Crazy" and Lauren Hill s "Everything Is Everything"). Along for the ride are vocalists Matt Berninger of the National, Yim Yames of My Morning Jacket, Sharon Jones, Lou Reed, and Booker himself, telling the story of how the funk/soul sound that Booker helped invent spiraled out from Memphis, touching The Root s hometown of Philadelphia, New York (where engineer Gabe Roth has been recreating classic soul sonics for everyone from Sharon Jones to Amy Winehouse), and Detroit. Detroit as in Dennis Coffey, legendary Motown session guitarist who introduced driving rock funk rhythm to hits like "Cloud Nine" and "Ball of Confusion" by the Temptations, and brings his Detroit grit to these tracks. The Road from Memphis is classic Memphis soul, and classic Booker in the tradition of "Green Onions", but beyond that it is the story of a sound, and how Booker, working with the inheritors of his sound, is keeping a tradition alive.

Booker is known as a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, record producer, and arranger, and is best known for fronting Booker T and the MGs. This is his first solo album in decades. He teamed with southern rockers Drive-By Truckers to produce an album that is raw and edgy, fun and innovative. And just to seal the deal, long-time Booker associate Neil Young dropped by to play blistering lead guitar on nine of the ten tracks. Produced by Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Beck, Rickie Lee Jones, Foo Fighters) and Booker T.

One of Stax Records' most unique and fascinating releases from their extensive Soul catalog, Booker T & The MGs' McLemore Avenue features instrumental covers of songs from The Beatles' Abbey Road album (released only months earlier in September '69). McLemore is the street housing the famed Stax studio in Memphis TN.

Truly a curio for Booker T. and Beatles fans alike, McLemore Avenue has now been re-issued with 7 BONUS TRACKS!

Almost an accidental ensemble, Booker T. & the MGs came together for a functional reason--to play as the house band for Memphis's Stax Records. But organist Booker T. Jones and guitarist Steve Cropper found alchemy, transforming rhythm-section riffing into an art, slicing through air where listeners expected vocals and doing so with tremendous success on their first single, "Green Onions," which was later featured on the American Graffiti soundtrack. This three-CD set captures the quartet's core in plentiful doses, leading off with their 1961 first salvo and cruising through numerous attempts at remaking the soulful classic. But in tinkering with the "Green Onions" formula, the band found dozens of instrumental variations, much like later, all-instrumental genre straddlers like Medeski Martin & Wood. They also found countless hours of work, backing some of Memphis soul's most revered artists (think Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett) and defining a backbone sound of organ and guitar layered over the increasingly vital rhythms of bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn and original drummer Al Jackson. They played expansive minor-key soul, as "Ode to Billie Joe" and many other tunes here attest, and later in the 1960s went on to churn out charting hits and great albums alike. The second CD in this set captures some great moments, especially the segments from McLemore Avenue, the quartet's all-instrumental tune-for-tune riposte to Abbey Road. Later in the set you get Albert King on vocals for a gritty "Born Under a Bad Sign" and then Boz Scaggs and Neil Young fronting the quartet (with Steve Potts or Jim Keltner drumming in place of the long-ago murdered Jackson). This collection will leave you wanting more. --Andrew Bartlett

This collection illustrates how Booker T & The MGs helped define, almost more than any other single factor, the spare, economical and groove-heavy sound of Memphis soul music.

In The Christmas Spirit by Booker T. & The Mg's

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Remastered reissue of 1971 album packaged in a digipak with original sleeve. Includes multimedia-track with video, biography and pictures.