| "Green Onions" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Cover of the 1962 US single | ||||
| Single by Booker T. & the M.G.'s | ||||
| from the album Green Onions | ||||
| B-side | "Behave Yourself" | |||
| Released | July 1962 | |||
| Recorded | June 1962, Memphis, Tennessee | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 2:52 | |||
| Label | Stax | |||
| Songwriter(s) | ||||
| Producer(s) |
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| Booker T. & the M.G.'s singles chronology | ||||
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| Official audio | ||||
| "Green Onions" on YouTube | ||||
"Green Onions" is an instrumental composition recorded in 1962 by Booker T. & the M.G.'s. Described as "one of the most popular instrumental rock and soul songs ever"[1] and as one of "the most popular R&B instrumentals of its era",[2] it utilizes a twelve-bar blues progression and features a rippling Hammond M3 organ line played by frontman Booker T. Jones, who wrote it when he was 17. However, the actual recording was largely improvised in the studio.[3]
The track was originally issued on the Volt label (a subsidiary of Stax Records) as the B-side of "Behave Yourself" on Volt 102; it was quickly reissued in August 1962 as the A-side of Stax 127, and it also appeared on the album of the same name that same year.[4] The organ sound of the song became a feature of the "Memphis soul sound".[5]
- ^ Unterberger, Richie. "Green Onions – Song Review". AllMusic. Retrieved May 3, 2016.
- ^ Hannusch, Jeff (November 1, 2012). "Booker T. & The M.G.S, Green Onions (Stax)". OffBeat. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
- ^ Larkin, Colin (2006). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. p. 753. ISBN 0195313739.
- ^ Strong, Martin Charles (2002). The Great Rock Discography. Canongate. p. 201. ISBN 978-1-84195-312-0.
- ^ Simpson, Dave (March 11, 2019). "How we made Booker T and the MGs' Green Onions". The Guardian. Retrieved March 23, 2019.