A Conversation with Booker T. Jones – HuffPost 7.19.13
Mike Ragogna: Booker, how are you?
Booker T. Jones: I’m doing well, Michael, how are you?
MR: I’m fine, thank you for asking. Booker, you have a new album called Sound The Alarmwith a song called “Fun” included. I would say that pretty much sums up this album.
BTJ: Oh, thank you. It’s a good time album. We had fun making it and people seem to enjoy it.
MR: You’ve recorded so many albums and singles over the years, but did you jump into this project a little differently than others?
BTJ: In terms of music, it’s something of a return to the roots that I helped establish in Memphis, Tennessee. In terms of the genre “R&B,” it’s an R&B album, and there’s some really funky blues on there, however, there is also some more modern music that reaches out to the limits. I wanted to explore other stuff on there that I like to do.
MR: You have some guests on here like Luke James and Mayer Hawthorne. How did you come to assemble your cast of musical characters?
BTJ: Well, it was the result of, basically, my life path. I met these people recently and became friends with Mayer Hawthorne, became an admirer of his when I was with my friends in his house jamming on some of his songs. I met Anthony Hamilton three consecutive times in line at The Grammys, waiting to get food after the ceremony. He was always standing behind me. I thought that was a fateful thing, so we exchanged numbers and decided to stop meeting like that and went to the studio together. A similar thing when I was in Cupertino demonstrating some songs for Apple. I met Gary Clark Jr., who was downstairs doing the same thing. Of course, I stopped my project to go downstairs and listen to him. I gave him my phone number and we became friends. It just continued like that. My son Ted was a fan of Joe Bonamassa, and he listened to Joe. One particular day, I though I heard Joe playing extremely well from the family room on TV. When I walked into the room, the television was off, and it was actually my son Ted playing. So I thought, “I’d better get that kid on the record.”
MR: You must be proud of your son!
BTJ: I am, I am.
MR: You also brought in Raphael Saadiq.
BTJ: Yes, we met in Norway through a mutual friend Joss Stone. I had worked with Joss since she was just a kid in New York. She was working on a demo up there and I helped her arrange the songs. She and Raphael were close and she introduced us at a sound check in Oslo.
MR: With this project, did you end up writing the songs specifically for it or were they songs that were collecting along the line?
BTJ: The songs… For Gary, for instance–“Austin City Blues”–I wrote that specifically for him. I played with some people that he played with–George Raines and people that hung out at Austin’s blues club down on Congress Boulevard. I wrote that for him because he plays that old Mississippi style. We would hang out down there when I was with Willie Nelson at Clifford Antone’s club. Those are the same chops that Gary had when he was a boy, although he’s still considered much younger than me. I wrote that for him and I wrote the “Father Son Blues” for my son. Anthony Hamilton wrote his song for me, and it’s a very touching piece, a very beautiful lyrical tribute to what’s going on in my life right now.
MR: “Gently,” yeah.
BTJ: Yeah, yeah. I was so moved by that. Estelle, of course, I heard her sing “American Boy” and the way she treated the melody and her voice… I met her in Las Vegas, she’s just a beautiful person and a beautiful, beautiful singer.
MR: And, of course, there are the Avila brothers. They have a big hand in the co-production of some of these songs.
BTJ: They do, they do! I met them jamming at a club out in LA, actually. Robert played bass in my band just for a little bit, and he’s a master sampler and programmer.
MR: Booker, you’ve written so many songs and you’ve worked on so many projects, producing yourself and others. When you’re writing a song, where is it coming from these days?
BTJ: That’s a really good question, Michael, and if I could answer that, I probably would have written more songs than I have. But I’ll tell you, did you hear “I Love To Watch You Sleeping,” that I do with Bill Withers’ daughter, Kori Withers?
MR: Yeah.
BTJ: I was actually reading a magazine, some rag, and they were speaking about how women and men in general like to hear about intimate subjects in their songs, and their music and this just popped up in my mind. What could be more intimate than watching your lover sleep? So I just had to stay up and work on that. “I love to watch you sleeping, I never want to wake you up.” The words and the idea came before the melody on that one. I could never harness that.
MR: Over the years, what’s changed in how you approach music?
BTJ: I might be a little bit more free. I might have been able to eliminate whatever restrictions were there, if anything was different. I was working the Stax records in the sixties and they were pretty much strictly R&B. I left Memphis and all of the limitations left as I met people like Steven Stills and Bob Dylan and Bill Withers and Earl Klugh. I met Earl Klugh and I realized I just really have loved jazz all my life and this is a person I want to spend some time with. I spent time with Neil Young and people that were outside my comfort zone. That was different for me, but I was actually more comfortable outside my comfort zone in many cases.
MR: Do you feel like Booker T at this point in time is the best Booker T ever?
BTJ: Oh my goodness, what a question! I’m very happy with the musical output right now, I’m just enjoying it. I’m riding a wave and I’m just really trying not to think about it or worry about it, I’m just having a good time. This Booker T hopefully will evolve into something bigger I hope.
MR: [laughs] What do you think when you look back at recordings like “Green Onions” these days, or “I’ve Never Found A Girl” or “I Love You More Than Words Can Say”?
BTJ: Those particular moments, those were just such fortunate moments in my life. “Green Onions,” I’m still trying to recapture the way I played that song the first time. In all these years, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make it sound exactly like that, or when I was playing guitar for William Bell on “I Forgot To Be Your Lover” and everyone sampled that. I still haven’t been able to recapture that. It’s just fortunate to be able to step into those moments and focus on what was going on at the time and enjoy it and come out with music that I love and other people like. It’s just fortunate.
MR: From my perspective, you have contributed a lot to music by helping to develop the Stax sound and what you’ve added to people’s records over the years. You might not pay a lot of attention to it, but are you at least aware of the musical contributions that you’ve made to the culture?
BTJ: I appreciate it. The truth is I’m a conduit. I don’t know if I understand the process and I don’t know if I have the capacity to fully understand it. I just know that I’m in the position to receive musical ideas that move me and my job is to just have done my piano practice and my guitar practice and be in position to try to translate it at the moment that it’s happening.
MR: You mentioned earlier about “Green Onions” having some magic that you’ve tried to recapture all these years. That was a magical moment in R&B.
BTJ: Yeah, it’s a special song. I still love it, to this day, and when I hear it I’m like, “Oh my god.” That’s one of my favorite records and I’m just happy I played on it.
MR: Do you have a favorite child, so to speak, among your instruments?
BTJ: Yes, I do. I have a Hammond B3, it’s in my bedroom and it’s a special one that I got. Each one is different, Michael. Each one sounds different, each of my children is different and I have such beautiful children. Each one contributes in such a special way and that’s the way it is with the musical pieces and the musical instruments. Also, each one is really unique and you can’t really compare and I don’t think you can really pick a special child.
MR: I love that you knew where I was going with that, thank you.
BTJ: It’s true! I’m not putting you on there.
MR: Have you ever had that moment where the instrument starts writing through you, like you have to get out of its way?
BTJ: Yeah, the Hammond B3 and the guitar are like that. Sometimes I just sit back and allow my hands to move. That’s just great when that happens. It speaks.
MR: Booker, has anybody come up to you and said something to the effect of, “Listening to your music over the years and how you play has affected my life very deeply?”
BTJ: Yes and that’s so encouraging. When people say stuff like that, it really means so much to me. It really helps when things are not going well to remember that people put your records on to get through study periods or whatever they use it for–weddings, etc. That kind of thing really helps.
MR: Nice. Booker, what advice do you have for new artists?
BTJ: Well, for a new artist… The first, most important thing and the hardest thing for some people is just to have that focused faith in your own self and to really believe in what you’re doing and somehow make that the thing that carries you through.
MR: So true. Hey, I’m going to be interviewing Earl Klugh, do you have a shoutout to him?
BTJ: Tell him I miss him and thank you so much for the great times we’ve had. That’s my guy from Detroit. Yeah, say hello to Earl, that’ll be great to speak to him.
MR: I will! Are you ever going to take a break from your touring?
BTJ: That’s a good question. I don’t know, maybe if I could ever pick up my golf clubs again, I would do something like that.
MR: You’ve been pretty busy with that through the year?
BTJ: Yeah, we play a lot. It’s great.
MR: Of all of the songs of the album that someone should listen to first to get a good idea of who Booker T is, what do you think they should go to?
BTJ: Me and Mayer do “Sound The Alarm”; it’s really on fire, it’s really a hot song. I feel like my heart is burning hot now like it has before, and this is the song. It’s a good example of the album.
MR: A couple of years down the line, where do you see yourself?
BTJ: [laughs] Hopefully very close to where I am now, because I’m having a good time making good music and playing for people and just hanging pretty close to where I am at home.
MR: Booker, there’s been a lot about you in the press over the years, but what is the one thing that people still don’t know about you?
BTJ: People don’t know that I was trained as a classical musician. My training is as an orchestrator and conductor. I didn’t know what I was doing when I was at Stax, and then I finally went to Indiana University to figure music out and took conducting. I did my senior recital on Trombone. I’m a classical musician and my first instrument was guitar. People think that I’m an organist, but I just played organ because Steve Cropper was playing guitar.
MR: You also have major honoraria, like your Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall Of Fame induction and your Grammy lifetime achievement award. What do you think of that kind of love?
BTJ: The induction into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall Of Fame just bowled me over. I didn’t think our music was rock ‘n’ roll, I thought we were R&B, and to be inducted so early into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall Of Fame was the best thing that could happen in my life and my career at the time. It’s still an unbelievable honor for me. The lifetime achievement award, I would say, was icing on the cake for me because it came from people who do what I do. The people who voted were people who understood what it took to survive in the music business and also people who understood the rewards. That award just means more to me than anything else, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy.
MR: Really beautiful. Any words of wisdom?
BTJ: Words of wisdom? Oh you won’t believe this, but do you really want it? Forget the past and don’t think about the future because this is it right now. This is the most beautiful time ever, right here, right now.
MR: Wow. This was wonderful, Booker. I am a fan and I think you’re amazing.
BTJ: I appreciate it. Thanks so much Michael.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne