The thing about funky music, really funky music, is that there is as much to what you don’t play as to what you do. Anticip…. is what it is all about. Some people give Booker T. and the M.G.s a hard time about McLemore Avenue, saying that it is too mellow, almost cheesy. I think they are missing the point. I think it is subtle. Just like the original was subtle.
The original, of course, being Abbey Road. By the Beatles? Yes, you know the record. Even if you don’t know the record, you know the record. That’s true of a lot of the Beatles’ stuff because they are so pervasive in the sound of modern music. Abbey Road, like Revolver and the White Album, are not records stuck in their time. Put Revolver up against any current indie release and see which one sounds more fresh and original.
I’ll grant that you can’t do that with McLemore Avenue. It will sound like a 70’s funk record in a lot of ways. That’s what it is supposed to sound like, by the way. Booker T. and the M.G.s listened to Abbey Road when it came out in September of 1969 and were so blown away that they covered the entire album and had a record out by April 1970. McLemore Avenue refers to the location of the Stax studio in Memphis where Booker T. and the M.G.s were the house band for the likes of Otis Redding and Issac Hayes.
The record takes the charts cooked up by Lennon and McCartney and places them in the context of Soulsville. The songwriting mastery of John and Paul is obvious, but so too is the mastery of Booker T. on Hammond organ, Steve Cropper on electric guitar, Al Jackson on drums, and Duck Dunn on bass. One wonders what the Beatles would have sounded like with Al Jackson rather than Ringo Starr playing the skins. Dunn’s bass has become the archetype of the instrument, so it is easy to miss that he did it first and best. And of course, Steve and Booker T.