“Green Onions” by Booker T. & the MG's

"Green Onions" is the sound of Memphis in its sharpest suit. Booker T. & the M.G.'s cut it in 1962, a twelve-bar blues with Booker T. Jones rippling across a Hammond M3 organ. He'd written it at 17, but the take itself was largely made up on the spot in the studio, with Steve Cropper, Al Jackson Jr. and Lewie Steinberg sharing the composer credit.

It first slipped out on Volt, a Stax subsidiary, as the flip side of "Behave Yourself", before somebody wised up and reissued it on Stax as the A-side; an album of the same name followed that same year. That organ tone went on to become part of what people mean by the Memphis soul sound, and the tune still ranks among the most popular soul records ever made.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.