One Sunday, we were supposed to be working with a singer called Billie Lee Riley, but something hadn’t worked out. He’d packed up and left, so we had the studio to ourselves. We started playing around with a piano groove I’d been performing in the clubs, trying to emulate Ray Charles. It sounded better on the organ, so I kept on playing that. Stax owner Jim Stewart liked what we were doing and wanted to put it out. Then it occurred to him that we needed a flip-side.

So I started playing another bluesy riff I had. This was how Green Onions began. That band – Al Jackson on drums, Lewie Steinberg on bass, Steve Cropper on guitar – was a once-in-a-lifetime unit. We clicked because of our devotion to simplicity. The bassline was basic 12-bar blues. Al was a human metronome on the drums. Lewie called this doodling jam Funky Onions, but Jim’s sister said: “We can’t use that word.” To laced-up, deep-south conservative America, it sounded like a cuss word. So we retitled it Green Onions.

Booker T. Jones (Hammond-organist, saxofonist, pianist m.m. ) fortæller historien (til avisen Guardian) om et af de mest berømte instrumentalnumre i rockens historie, “Green Onions” med Booker T. and the MGs.

https://youtu.be/NfdPNMaBWI0