Green Onions

Green Onions was the first album released on the Stax label. Three earlier Stax LPs, two by the Mar-Keys and one by Carla Thomas, had come out through Atlantic. It reached number 33 on the pop album chart in the month it was released and was Stax's first charting album.

The title track grew out of a jam after a session with another singer fell through, with Booker T. Jones on organ, Steve Cropper on guitar, Lewie Steinberg on bass and Al Jackson Jr. on drums. Apart from it, the sequel Mo' Onions and Behave Yourself, the record is made of instrumental covers of popular hits of the time, among them I Got A Woman, Twist And Shout and Stranger On The Shore. Jones later recalled that the covers were mostly songs introduced to the band by Estelle Axton, the Stax co-owner who ran the record shop next to the studio. Bob Altshuler wrote the sleeve notes, Haig Adishian designed the cover and Irving Schild, later the main photographer for Mad magazine, took the photograph. There is no picture of the band on it, which Cropper said was because the label did not want people to know it was a mixed-race group.

The Library of Congress later added the album to its National Recording Registry. Its entry describes the title track as "propelled by Booker T. Jones' driving organ and Steve Cropper's stinging guitar." The record is also in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.