The Soundtrack4Life Concert Series: Stax/Volt Revue 1967 Oslo, Norway

The latest in The Soundtrack4Life Concert Series is a show of Epic Proportions! It is infectous to the point that it is impossible to sit still (even whilst watching it you just feel the passion and want to dance!). It features some of the best, (no, scrap that) It features THE BEST Soul Men on the planet at the time! Don't believe me? Look at the Poster below and you'll see that this is a bill that lives up to the EXPECTATION and it hardly even needed the hype of being termed The Greatest Soul Show!


In the Spring of 1967 "The World's Greatest Soul Show" (as advertised) touched down in Europe. The Stax/Volt Revue played 13 shows in the UK before moving across the channel. Gavin Martin of The Independent has written a great piece on those shows and about the Stax Label (Read It Here) and its impact.

Johan Hauknes has written about a particular night on the tour, 7th April 1967 when the tour hobbled into Oslo, Norway. He called it 'The Holy Grail of Soul Music - The Stax/Volt Revue Tour of 1967'. And amazingly it almost never happened! 

The Tour Bus was late getting in, minutes past the scheduled start of the show, there was no time for soundchecks, the instruments were already there (provided by the promoter) so after checking all was plugged in correctly the show began, oh and I don't know if they were aware of it at the time, there was also a film crew capturing what is surely the finest bills you'd ever want to see!

There was dancing, no lip-synching and just pure sensational joy that stems from the stage and infects the audience! How could anyone sit still to this stuff!

Hope you enjoy it.

The August Album Challenge: 23. Instrumental Album

Instrumental albums? Have to confess I don't really have that many (about 10 actually)! I had thought of including The In Sound From Way Out! by Beastie Boys or a favourite piece of Classic Music like Schubert's 8th Symphony Unfinished  in B minor, or something like $1,000,000.00 Worth of Twang by Duane Eddy. Or I could have gone the Jazz route with the 1951 Debut Album from Miles Davis - The New Sounds - but I am so not beatnik or hipster enough to pull that off!

Instead it's a jump back to the 1960's and the debut album from one of the most valuable bands of the time for their contribution to the whole Stax/Volt Sound.

Green Onions - Booker T. and the M.G.'s

Stax/Atlantic

Produced by Jim Stewart

Released October 1962

US Chart #33

Personnel
    Steve Cropper - guitar
    Booker T. Jones - Hammond M3 organ, bass guitar, guitar, keyboards
    Lewie Steinberg - upright bass
    Al Jackson Jr. - drums

'Green Onions' was the fourth Stax album but the first actually released under the banner of the Stax label (the previous three, two by The Mar-Keys and one by Carla Thomas had been released on Atlantic Records).

It's an instrumental album that features the great Steve Cropper on guitar. Booker T. and the M.G.'s were infact the "house band" for Stax and would appear on recordings by Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Albert King, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, The Staple Singers and many more.