Time Is Tight

MEMPHIS—Summer 1963—3

Al Jackson sauntered into the studio. Big grin. Eyes sparkling. Peering directly at me.

"Whatchu got, Jones?"

That was his way of asking me to show him what music we would be working on that day. I was always ready to accept the duty of being the originator of the song material.

I returned Al's gaze with understanding. They needed me to come up with the essence of the song, so, as he always did, he asked, "Whatchu got, Jones?" That plunged me into my musical mind like a deep-sea diver looking for pearls on the ocean floor.

Sweater sleeves pulled up, Al dampened the sound of his snare by plopping his fat wallet onto the snare drum head and securing it with a few generous strips of masking tape. He then stepped off the riser, walked over to Steve, and took a Winston from Steve's box. Lighting the cigarette, he looked back at me. "You ready?"

Having already made a stop at the coffee machine in the foyer, I placed my fingers in "Green Onions" position on the keyboard. When I walked in, I needed an idea, and if I didn't have anything right away, I'd take another sip of coffee, another drag on a Salem, and then dive in and bring up something to show them. Some musical idea would just pop into my head. Usually a pebble, sometimes a pearl.

That morning, I pulled out the same stops as "Onions" and started twiddling the first three fingers of my right hand between a triad and a seventh chord. Good. Great sound from the speaker. Ended up using only three fingers for the whole pattern. Today's song had to be something soulful, and simple. Turned it up so loud, I almost distorted the little JBL speaker.

Jim Stewart entered the studio. "Hi, Booker." His eyes hinted at a smile. "Let's get started." The swatch of unruly red hair on Jim's forehead wrested my eyes away from his steady gaze. His infrequent smile was open, but it had to be earned.

Jim was the founder of the company and the engineer for the day. His nimble, surreptitious shift from country into black music was reflected in his gait, which he often used to amble into the studio late. Sometimes he forgot how hip he had become and went back to the fast shuffle of a white Memphis banker.

This session, which Jim surprisingly showed up early to, would have been started by Chips Moman (Jim's first studio foreman) or Steve Cropper (after the first couple years), and Jim would have to play catch-up to learn the song, or songs, for the day.

He bent over and moved the mike back a little. The banker's jacket slid off his tiny, swaybacked frame and revealed a neck elongated from years of playing the fiddle.

Lewie, meanwhile, moved his chair closer to my left hand to follow the notes and re-create them as the bass line. "That sounds like something." Steve put his Winston out. Al went back to his kit, straddled the throne, and picked up his sticks—a funky, subtle backbeat.

Lewie Steinberg, who picked lightly and faultlessly at his bass, was the daddy of the group. Steve Cropper paid attention to the rhythm. You could depend on Steve for originality and simplicity. You could rely on Al to keep the tempo better than a metronome; he never let songs run away. With this group, you could count on having a great groove no matter what you played.

"You guys got anything yet?" asked Jim, peering through the glass, listening.

Steve threw me a glance. Nothing worth working on yet, he said with his eyes. I dug deeper until I finally struck gold with a melody not unlike the ones I concocted on a nightly basis down at the Flamingo. Hours later, after nonstop experimenting and rearranging, Al, Steve, Lewie, and Jim were smiling as we came to the end of the little ditty.

Another day's work at Stax.

At the end of the day, I navigated my way to Jim's desk to pick up the diminutive but always valid check. We seemed to have a good rapport, Jim and I. He respected my musical abilities, my work ethic. But Jim still wrote the musicians' checks fast and somewhat begrudgingly, as if it were dirty work to be done quickly. He often looked off as he handed you the money or had Linda (Andrews, the secretary) do the honors.

Jim was there to acquire ownership of the publishing rights to the songs he recorded. From the beginning, he understood there was small chance of getting rich operating a record company. If he could get country or (later) R & B songs played that were licensed to his company, royalties were paid without deductions from the radio stations. To boot, the annuity lasted for twenty-six years, with a free renewal for another twenty-six years under US law.

This information was hidden from me. I was unaware of the concept of any profit associated with the writing of a song or that any proceeds were paid to people who wrote songs. At Satellite, I could get upward of five dollars per day to create original music, which I gladly did.

MEMPHIS—Summer 1951—2

As I finished second grade, going on seven years old, one of a few public spaces available to blacks in South Memphis was Lincoln Park, which also happened to be the site of my first kite contest. Before participating, I had fashioned a kite from newspaper and balsa wood sticks. It was held together with glue and had a bright blue tail made from Christmas wrapping ribbon. That early June afternoon, a light wind quickly and gently lifted my kite up close to the puffed-up, milky clouds that were waiting in the warm blue sky. It joined the flock of other kites erratically swaying next to each other.

I was so excited for the contest. There was food out on tables, booths with crafts, games, lots of people, and a large band playing on a covered stage. At the time, I had advanced from flying kites purchased at the drugstore to flying ones I had built in a large field behind my friend O. D. Adams's house over on Orleans Street.

Months of effort went into making my kite for that afternoon, but in an instant, none of that mattered. Serendipitously I wandered over to the stage where Al Jackson's band was playing. The blend created by the string bass and Al's kick drum hit repeatedly in my chest, like the dreams I'd had of music late at night in my bed. I was swept away in wonder at the sound of brass instruments dancing with wood instruments. My kite-making friends stayed behind, holding tightly to their strings, not noticing I let mine go. My kite wafted and glided upward while I also floated, just in the direction of the music, my feet skipping. After all that work, the newspaper kite was whirling, escaping, vanishing from sight.

The first big band I had ever heard live overwhelmed me with excitement.

The leader of the band was a slim, well-dressed older man. There were five saxophones in the front row and trumpets and trombones behind them. There was an upright bass, a piano, and a guitar. And there were drums with a very young man behind the set.

I didn't have much to say about the kite contest to my parents when I got home, just that I had heard a band playing in the park.

My parents already knew of my passion for music and, from the time I was very young, supported my endeavors in the discipline. Our small Edith Street house was built in 1945 and was only thirteen hundred square feet. The piano was in the living room, not far from my parents' bedroom. They never complained when I played into the night.

My success as a keyboardist comes from my attempts to emulate and duplicate my mother's style. She was a loving person and bequeathed to me many portions of her musical makeup. She birthed all of me, physically and musically.

The way she played the piano sunk into my being. I was born listening to her. When she sang at church, the room quieted as she gave renditions of gospel pearls and classic arias.

I got a double dose. People at church also requested my father, Booker T. Jones Sr., to sing "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" a cappella. There were no dry eyes when he finished. His sterling tenor voice, with its vibrato and sincere delivery, ensured that.

While I was only three or four when Mama sold her old upright piano, the missing instrument left a gaping hole in my heart. Even if I didn't know how to play then, I'd still get up on the bench and use two fingers to make harmony. Mom and Dad made up for it by buying me musical toys and later real instruments. I was so happy with those. One afternoon, a woman reporter from a Chicago magazine came to our house and sat in the living room, interviewing Mama. "Was Booker always musically inclined, Mrs. Jones?" she asked.

"I never thought of Booker doing anything else," Mama replied.

Piano notwithstanding, it was always the drum, or drums, that harbored an inescapable fascination for me, even before I saw Al Jackson Jr. the afternoon of the kite contest.

When I was a little boy, Mama used to take me to the downtown department stores: Bry's, Goldsmith's, Lowenstein's, and the Black and White Store. Of all the magical things we saw, what captured my attention the most was a toy drum at the five-and-dime store on Main. A delicate wooden thing, with the heads covered in a coarse paper mesh cloth, the drum sounded real. At home, it seemed like seconds before I busted the head, but I got to beat on it and to hear that sound and to hold those sticks.

I played my sticks anywhere I could—on a pillow, on the carpet, the top of a paper cup, anything that would bounce back even slightly. And then it became the sticks themselves that held the fascination for me. Rhythm after rhythm beat out on Mama's beautiful hardwood floor. It did damage the floor, and I got yelled at, but that hardwood responded so perfectly to my wrist movements. I began to play flams and paradiddles before I knew what they were.

Of course, when Dad took me to night football games, I watched Washington High School Drum and Bugle Corps perform.

MEMPHIS—Fall 1953—1

My life was changed forever when I was nine years old and my father surprised me with a brand-new clarinet. The dank smell of the case, the black wood, the beautiful dark green felt that caressed each piece, and the excess glue on some of the pads made a sight I will never forget. Not until I laid eyes on a Hammond B-3 organ was I ever so moved and hypnotized as when my father put that instrument in my hands. Everyone should experience such love and rhapsody at least once in their life.

Mr. McClellan, who was the band director at Leath School, a small school where my dad once taught, was a close friend and neighbor who lived up the street. One Saturday morning, my dad called him and asked if he would give me a short, impromptu lesson.

We went up to Mr. McClellan's house, he came out, and on his steep driveway, he showed me how to hold my clarinet and where to put my fingers to cover up the holes. Mr. McClellan was a short, stout, balding, and likeable man, who—in spite of inadvertently spitting all over me when he spoke—changed my life in just a few benevolent seconds.

We stood there in his driveway, me still holding the clarinet before I let go of the instrument to put it back in its case. It would be the starting position for my hands over that clarinet and many other woodwind instruments, including the oboe, with my fingers glued in place over the holes, like he showed me. Even while walking, I kept my hands in starting position. I cannot thank Mr. McClellan enough. Dad had sacrificed and made a down payment and signed papers for years of monthly payments to buy a clarinet for me.

One Saturday morning when I was nine years old, my dad told me under a bright, warm sun, "Go back in the house and get your clarinet. We're going to get a haircut." I had a slight twinge of anxiety. I'd been to Cade's before. Why am I taking my clarinet this time? What song will I play? Will I remember the notes? Dad was proud of me and wanted to show me off. He didn't doubt that I would do OK.

Set back from the street in a building of storefronts that included a beer garden as well as Samuel T. Lusk's watch repair shop, Cade's was so much more than a barbershop. There was a lot of camaraderie and good talk on any subject, and overflowing on the shelves under the big storefront windows were mounds of musty old magazines with curled edges. Overcoats were piled high on a coat rack, and laughter and political posturing were easy to find. Oddly, I loved the tired, pungent odor of the hair tonic in the red and green bottles that had expired months ago on the barbers' stations behind the chairs. It gave the place a unique, recurring reference point from other types of establishments.

Mr. Cade himself was a dark, slight man with a quiet nature. He always had a pleasant disposition while cutting my dad's hair and giving him a shave. I looked forward to perusing the many Life and Look magazines at the shop and playing the occasional game of checkers with any one of the men who would indulge me. Mr. Cade's son, Kenneth, older than me, was a member of the Washington High School band, playing clarinet, and I looked up to him. I think this fact was one of the things that helped influence my dad to buy my clarinet. God knows he couldn't afford it.

Mr. Macklin was the barber who took care of my hair—Mr. Mac, we called him. He used his strong hands to give my bald head a vigorous massage with aftershave lotion each time my haircut was done. Then he'd unsnap the pin securing the towel and slap and smack my bald head all over with aromatic tonic and talcum powder. "There you go, boy," he said, with another firm smack, and I was free to catch yet another cold with my bald head.

The shop quieted as I began the first notes. The tune I picked was a very popular song I had heard on a TV show, Skokian, which I taught myself on my new clarinet. It was the first time I played for an audience—the men recognized the tune instantly. After I played the last note, there was silence.

I was thrown off by this. Did they enjoy the song? Did I miss some notes? One by one they started to smile and applaud. They kept clapping. So long that I felt uncomfortable. I didn't know what to do. I made a nervous bow and rushed over to the window to put my clarinet back in its case and sat down close to my beaming father.