Photo by David Reed
"It was pretty much of a one-shot deal at Stax, cause we didn’t have the money to buy a three-track or some of these other fancy machines, they were out, and built, but not too many people had them. Atlantic had one of the first eight-tracks - I think Sun had one of the first three-tracks, and that’s how they were able to get that echo on the Elvis and Jerry Lee records, just by throwing it back through and letting it slap, getting it phasing against itself. We later went to a four-track, and started advancing on our capabilities and the technical side of things. Most all of the original stuff, Green Onions and all the earlier Eddie Floyd and Wilson Pickett and Rufus Thomas stuff was all cut in mono. So it had to be done in the studio, during the day, with everybody ready to go, and it had to be right. You could edit takes together, if you had a fade-out that was better than another one, or an intro better, you could do that and piece them together, but that didn’t happen too often. It’s a good thing we had Al Jackson!
When it comes to songwriting, do you have any particular approach?
- Well there are two ways I do it - basically one is that I start with a title, if I’m writing a song with lyrics. I like to come up with a title that pretty much says it, and then you just write about it. You just embellish on the title. The other way, if I’m writing an instrumental, I just start working on the groove and a little bit of the melody, and try to carry that out, and find if it’s going to go to the bridge or whatever. And then I just bring that forward, and seldom ever do we title instrumentals till they’re finished. And then we try to think, well, what does it remind us of. That’s usually the way we title them.
I guess that’s how Green Onions came about, then.
- Yeah, I sort of liked that! We had it cut, and we were listening to it, and somebody said, ”Man, that is stinky!” So I said, ”What are we going to name it? What’s stinky?” ”Well, how about onions, onions are stinky.” And I just sort of said,”Yeah, I like onions, but onions is kind of a negative, they’re so stinky, but *green* onions, people put them on their plate and eat them!” And they said, ”Yeah, you’re right, Green Onions sounds better.” So that’s what we went with. Stinkin’ green onions. (Laughs) Somebody suggested Wild Onions, but I just said no, I don’t think Wild Onions sounds as good. Actually, I think somebody put one out called Wild Onions, a copy kind of thing.
Interview by Paul Guy 1999
Green Onions - Booker T. & Steve Cropper, Keb Mo, Albert Lee who else can you spot?!
... Live Guitar Festival New York 2013
Steve Cropper
Steve Cropper
Play It Steve
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