Green Onions

Green Onions is a twelve-bar blues instrumental built on a rippling Hammond M3 organ line that Booker T. Jones created at 17 by improvising in the studio. It was first issued on Volt as the B-side of Behave Yourself and then reissued as the A-side on Stax.

Accounts of the title differ. Jones has said it was first to be called Funky Onions, but Stax co-owner Estelle Axton thought that sounded like a cuss word. Cropper has said it is not a marijuana reference, and has also recalled Lewie Steinberg proposing the name Onions. Cropper said he struck the opening note of his solo so hard that Stewart turned him down in the mix, and the take was kept. A WLOK disc jockey in Memphis played it four times in a row, Cropper recalled, and listeners called to ask if it was out.

It entered the Hot 100 in the week ending 11 August 1962 and peaked at number 3 on 29 September, and it topped the R&B chart for four non-consecutive weeks. In Britain it charted after being used in the film Quadrophenia, reaching number 7 in January 1980. Rolling Stone placed it at number 181 on its original list of 500 greatest songs, the only instrumental on it, and number 418 on the 2021 revision. It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Blues Hall of Fame in 2018.

Covers and echoes

The Blues Brothers and Roy Buchanan, both with Cropper on guitar, have covered it, as have the Ventures, Al Kooper, the Shadows, Mongo Santamaria, Deep Purple and Count Basie. Dick Hyman recorded it in 1969 for The Age of Electronicus. Sonny Boy Williamson's 1963 recording Help Me was based on it, and Maxi Priest and Shaggy sampled it in 1996 for That Girl. The sequel, Mo' Onions, is on the album and came out as a single in 1964.