We were teenage GIs attending an electronics-repair school back then and a few of us were sitting in this cool little haunt called The Office a couple of blocks off the main drag in downtown Augusta, Georgia. We weren’t up to much, just passin’ time nursing cheap Scotch and feeding chump change into the jukebox.
My nickels went mostly for Mose Allison’s somewhat-recent recording of his own “Parchman Farm” and its flip side, his version of Duke Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” Over and over I’d play them. The phrase “ad nauseam” comes to mind. I couldn’t get enough of Mose in those days. Actually, I still can’t.
Brick, the young proprietor of the small hip hangout, never made a big deal out of checking to see if we were 21. He knew all we had to do if we felt hassled was go a few blocks down to the bridge that would take us over the Savannah River to North Augusta, South Carolina, and its string of 18-and-over saloons. There, we knew, our money, little as it was, would be welcome.
But we liked his joint. The Office had an air of sophistication, whatever that was. Representing the young male demographic that went into the Army rather than college right out of high school, we no doubt carried literary and musical chips on our shoulders.
We didn’t need to study “On the Road” or “Kind of Blue” in a classroom to “get it.” Our haunt of choice would work nicely, thank you! Obviously, we had self esteem issues that needed working through.
The reason I still remember Brick and his warm, intimate watering hole so well after all these years is that it was from his corner-situated coin-operated 45-rpm Wurlitzer that I first heard “Green Onions” by Booker T. & the MGs. Brick had grown weary of Mose and, grabbing one of my nickels, punched it up on his music machine.
Those Steve Cropper guitar accents would stay with me forever. To this day, it’s still one of the coolest riffs I’ve ever heard. Once bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn came on board in 1965, they would go on to define southern soul and its most singular hybrid, Memphis soul, with one of the more danceable “grooves” in the genre that had only recently come to be known as R&B.
Although I found the Funk Brothers, the Motown house band, to be rhythmically quite interesting, it afforded little of the musical passion brought on by Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, Sam & Dave, and the rest of the Stax Records stable. And, of course, the house band and groove-provider for all those great Stax studio sessions was Booker T. & the MGs
That pure sound of Memphis R&B has never let me down. From Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man” and “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” with that great Mar-Keys’ horn section, to Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” and Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” (the last two co-written by Cropper), nothing touched that Stax sound.
Even after three days at the Monterey Pop Festival, I couldn’t stop talking about how much the Memphis boys held their own amid all the hype. Not that Hendrix and The Who didn’t rock the fest, but Booker T. & the MGs, both in their solo set and as backup band for Otis Redding, were as powerful musically as anyone.
Two years later, when I attended yet another multi-day festival, this one headlined by Hendrix and Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Memphis boys were again as brilliant as any of the bigger names. No hype, just perfect rock and roll! In fact many of the “rock stars” made mention of how truly inspiring it was to finally catch those legendary Memphis cats in person.
Now, with that history, you can imagine how much I went into full-adrenal alert upon learning that a tour featuring Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn called “Memphis Soul: The Music of Stax Records” had not only been assembled but was scheduled to stop in Park City earlier this summer.
Well, that show didn’t happen due to a European tour proving more lucrative in the timeframe. BUT, instead of outdoors at Deer Valley back then, we get indoors at the Eccles Center this coming Saturday night. As John Hiatt would say, “We’re going to Memphis in the meantime, baby!”
Don’t let this one slip by just because you might not be all that familiar with what went down in that magic space on McLemore Avenue in Memphis back in the ’60s. This is about the pure essence of American music and, whether you know it or not, it’s already a big part of who you are. Plus it’s a great chance to get your groove back.
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.