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Soul Men

by

Booker T. And The M.G.'s

 
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Soul Men
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Avg: 3.5 (35 ratings)

  • We Say...

    Review by Ron Wynn

    Organist Booker T. Jones, guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist Louis Steinberg (later replaced by Duck Dunn) and drummer Al Jackson, Jr. were not only a sterling house band for the Memphis-based Stax label, they were also a superb combo unto themselves, and Soul Men provides worthwhile insight into their artistry. This compilation of previously unreleased sessions, most of them from 1965-1968, finds the combo subtly reinventing hit tunes of the day by songwriters ranging from Lennon-McCartney to Hayes-Porter. It includes three covers of songs they themselves had originally cut as a backing band, and Jones' swirling organ licks sound even more heated on these versions of "When Something Is Wrong with My Baby," "Soul Man" and "On a Saturday Night" than they did behind Sam and Dave and Eddie Floyd. Steve Cropper nicely approximates Slim Harpo's loping "swamp" groove on "Baby, Scratch My Back," and delivers slithering blues riffs on Willie Dixon's "Wang Dang Doodle." Soul Men is a remarkable combination of musical imagination and rhythmic muscle, delivered with the ineffable less-is-more elan of this fabled quartet.

  • They Say...

    Review by Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide

    Although all of these 25 cover versions were recorded in the '60s, none of them were released at the time. Unfortunately, info as to the exact dates of the individual tracks has been lost, though Stax scholar Rob Bowman's liner notes figure that most of them were cut between 1965-1968, with some possibly dating from 1962-1964. Putting all of them onto a single disc decades later might seem like a vault-cleaning exercise of secondary material. But this turns out to be a surprisingly good and vibrant collection of instrumental soul interpretations of rock, soul, and pop hits of the '60s, even if it's not up to the level of Booker T. & the MG's more famous hits and original numbers. Even though these were often laid down quickly before or after sessions on which the band was backing other artists, most of these don't sound like throwaways. They're characteristically disciplined and imaginative, and the scope is remarkably wide, taking in Beatles songs, blues ("Wang Dang Doodle" and "Baby Scratch My Back"), Motown, straight pop ("Downtown"), and even some songs on which Booker T. & the MG's actually played on the original recordings (Sam & Dave's "Soul Man" and "When Something Is Wrong with My Baby," and Eddie Floyd's "On a Saturday Night"). Not all of the reworkings are top-notch; the Beatles' "You Can't Do That" is taken at a jazzy shuffle that doesn't suit the tune. But most of them are very good, and not straight copies of the original arrangements, with the band effectively cooking up different tempos and simmering guitar/organ interplay.

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