Booker T. & The M.G.’s salute the Beatles

This 1970 album pays tribute to the Beatles studio swan song, Abbey Road. The original album’s tracks (save “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “Oh! Darling” and “Octopus’s Garden”) are arranged as instrumentals in three medleys and a solo spotlight of George Harrison’s “Something.” Booker T’s organ and piano, and Steve Cropper’s guitar provide most of the vocal melody lines. The results are interesting, if not always particularly inventive. Many of the songs find resonance with the group’s soulful style, but neither the arrangements nor the performances offer the last-gasp creative dominance the Beatles poured into the final work.

By this point in Booker T. & the M.G.’s career, the soul grooves that had backed Stax’s great vocal acts and launched iconic instrumental hits were second nature, and perhaps that’s part of the problem. A few of the performances, such as “Here Comes the Sun” and “You Never Give Me Your Money,” fail to strike any new sparks, and sound more like the uninspired cover versions churned out by faceless studio groups in the ‘60s than the high-octane output of the era’s most famous instrumental soul combo. In contrast, Al Jackson kicks up sparks with his resonant tom-tom lead in to “The End,” Booker T and Steve Cropper cut winning solos on “Something,” and the four parts of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” fits the four instrumentalists like a glove.

Concord’s reissue reproduces the original album cover – a Memphis-based pastiche of the original – and adds liner notes by Ashley Kahn. The album’s original tracks are augmented by five additional Beatles covers drawn from the group’s albums, all remastered in 24-bits by Joe Tarantino. Among the bonuses are an unreleased alternate take of “You Can’t Do That” and an unlisted radio ad delivered as an “Her Majesty” like coda at the end of the last track. Interestingly, this was the next-to-last album recorded by the MGs for Stax, mirroring Abbey Road’s place in the Beatles’ recording history; but it was the group’s terrific last LP, Melting Pot, that was their own proper swan song. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]