Booker T. Jones - Potato Hole

(Muso's Guide, May 7, 2009)

Album review

Legendary musicians are ten a penny these days. Haven’t you heard it’s an ageing population?

Take Booker T. Jones. Best known for fronting instrumental Booker T. and the MGs, they set dance floors alight in 1962 with the Hammond organ-drenched, bass-driven ‘Green Onions’. Almost 50 years later and ‘Green Onions’ is still the essence of cool, all the cooler when you find out that Booker T. Jones penned the hit while he was still in high school.

So a new record from this gent is really something to write home about.

Kicking off with the organ-led ‘Pound It Out’, Potato Hole embraces the modern era in a way which is quite staggering, the song roughly hewn from rock guitar and sweltering hot. Throughout the ten tracks, Jones’ prodigious talent for the keys is instrumentally augmented by Drive By Truckers, an Athens, Georgia band with roots in country and alternative rock.

The influence of the Truckers’ sound shows throughout, with a heaviness to the guitar sound which sits surprisingly well with Jones’ Hammond B3 noodlings. What’s amazing is the new life that someone like Booker T. Jones can breathe into the music he touches. At the ripe old age of 64, he is taking on tracks like ‘Hey Ya’ by Outkast and making them zing afresh, with the Truckers’ help.

There is a certain person who will purchase Potato Hole - probably a die-hard fan, certainly an experimental listener. Sometimes it does have the impact of a pan pipes moods CD, where the melody is pounded out on an organ instead of in vocals, but it’s still a very interesting musical construction, and one which should be supported.

The album highlight has to be ‘Native New Yorker’, exhibiting grouchy guitars plundering through the intro, before a truly meaty rock track strikes up, underpinned all the while by Jones’ skillful keys.

Legends are everywhere - appreciate them while they’re still around.