Customer Reviews

And Now

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This is the third MG's album. The first two ("Green Onions" and "Soul Dressing") featured a bassist named Lewie Steinberg whose bass lines were very blues-based and traditional. This album is where Donald "Duck" Dunn, a younger, more inventive bassist, came in. Like the "Green Onions" album, "And Now" mixes original tunes with cover material to good effect ("Soul Dressing" was all-original and didn't catch on well with listeners). The sound of "And Now," though, shows Dunn's influence: Things are less bluesy and more funky and the MG's are beginning to reach the magic formula that they'd perfect on the later "Hip Hug-Her" and "Soul Limbo" albums.

After an unexpected smash instrumental hit, the cutting edge "Green Onions", the MGs, which have been called "an accidental ensemble", recorded two albums much in the same vein. Before the group's second album, Soul Dressing, was released, bassist Lewie Steinberg was replaced by guitarist Steve Cropper's boyhood friend and fellow member of the Stax group The Mar-Keys Donald "Duck" Dunn. This move proved to be historical musically and socially (with Dunn, the line-up was half black and half white in Memphis in the sixties no less). Although Steinberg was solid as could be, he was no Duck Dunn. These four musicians put Stax on the map and created an inimitable sound backing up artists like Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, and Blues great Albert King.

And Now . . . was the first album the newly formed group released. Though not as focused as its predecessor Soul Dressing, and not as great as the following year's Hip Hug-Her, the album is very enjoyable and features many terrific moments. Only one track here was released as a single. The great "My Sweet Potato", a piano workout for Booker T. Jones with marvelous support from drummer Al Jackson, Jr., was a top twenty R&B hit. Among the other standouts are the ahead of its time "Taboo", a funky take on "Jericho", a very nice version of "Sentimental Journey", and a fantastic instrumental cover of James Brown's "Think", written by The Five Royales' guitarist and Cropper inspiration Lowman Pauling. The best track here has to be the Gershwin/Heyward classic "Summertime". Jones's organ work is wonderful and Cropper's "less is more" guitar is breath taking. That track, more than anything else on the album provides insight to how brilliant Booker T. & the MGs were quickly becoming.

This album was very rare when I found it as a library discard 30 years ago. Now I've got the cd and it sounds better than ever. It's one of my favorite albums from the 1960s.