Al Jackson, Jr.

You know, there was no crutch.

There was no, and out like Al Jackson jr.

Could just fucking play.

Like, yeah.

Steve Cropper, a white guitarist from the Ozarks, was already in the building.

Doc Dunn, another white guy from Memphis, played bass.

Hal Jackson Jr., a black drummer, kept time other drummers described as inhuman.

Two black musicians, two white musicians, in Memphis in the early 1960s, in a city where a black man and a white man could not legally eat at the same lunch counter.

Inside the building, none of that existed.

And all of those kinds of things would come through the head arrangements part.

I would go to Al Jackson, for instance, on Hold On, and come and say, do you remember the Get Out of My Life woman record by Lee Dorsey.

He said, yes.

I said, can you give us a beat on this song akin to that? And that was the motivation for the drum pattern that Al Jackson was playing on Hold On, I'm Coming.

And I think I said Tennessee Walker Horse.

Al, can you give us a beat like the Tennessee Walker Horse? That's the beat that you hear on I Thank You.

And Al Green clearly rapidly became the king of soul with that stuttering sound that Otis had, you know, Memphis, the sound of Memphis.

And I mean, Al Green he was produced by a guy called Willie Mitchell he had one of the best drummers in the world a guy named Al Jackson playing drums and they were superb recordings well recorded well engineered I mean an amazing artist

Though it hurt me so to let you know.

When I look in your eyes, you want to let me know how you feel.

thing.

That's why you can appreciate someone like a Steve Cropper or someone like a Booker T. Jones or someone like an Al Jackson Jr., the drummer, who the Stax Studio floor was an old movie theater, as I mentioned.

And it's a sloped floor.

You could walk in the room and the floor goes down and it goes up so you can see the movie screen.

That's the old movie theater.

Well, Al Jackson was always hearing a delay in that room because musicians would play at different points of the room.

And for him to lock everybody in... where the pocket should be, speak to the genius of Al Jackson Jr.

It also speaks to the rhythm attributes that Steve would have in order to be sure that he was locking with Al, who then makes everybody else lock to them.

I love John's playing.

But I go back to the bluesman, you know, to Al Jackson and Booker T and the MGs.

I mean, that was the first drummer that I really listened to.

Vocalists, not so much.

That was a conscious effort on our part to do that.

And so how did you, when you sat down, you and Isaac sat down, you wrote that song, and then how did you communicate that to the band? And the band, I'm assuming, was Al Jackson the drummer on that? Al Jackson Jr.,

Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, some cases Booker T. Jones, other cases Isaac would be playing the keyboard.

The Memphis Horns would consist of Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love, and we would add, in most cases, a couple other players, different players, but always around Andrew and Wayne.

And they had all these fantasies.

The bond that we had in that studio, the whites were Steve Cropper, Doug Dunn, Wayne Jackson.

The blacks were Al Jackson Jr., Booker T. Jones, Isaac Hayes, David Porter, Andrew Love, Wayne Jackson.

And so that was it.

And I might suggest that they listen to one or two or three different drummers' work and search it out.

And they go to listen to Al Jackson Jr. at Stax Records and listen to Howard Grimes at Royal Studios.

all the Al Green stuff.

Listen to Benji Benjamin and Motown and listen to, you know, Earl Palmer and New Orleans and then a long list of New Orleans drums.

But I come into this song having heard the original quite many times.

And this song, the second cover on the album, composed by Al Green, Al Jackson Jr., and Willie Mitchell.

Like you said, classic love song, classic Memphis soul sound.

And this version slows things down.