Southern Soul Sunday 35

It's instrumental week on Southern Soul Sunday featuring the house band(s) from the legendary Stax label.
The Mar-Keys were an all white band who evolved from the Royal Spades who included Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and Packy Axton son of Stax co-founder Estelle Axton among their nuumber
However when the million selling Last Night was recorded some members were deemed not good enough and were replaced by mainly black session musicians
The Mar-Keys in turn evolved into Booker T and the MGs. The young Booker T Jones was a constant feature at the Stax Studios and record shop in the former Capitol Picture House in East McLemore, Memphis.
Unusually for the time in the segregated South the band boasted both black and white members in their midst with the classic line up pictures above
Duck Dunn on bass, Booker T on organ and piano, Steve Cropper on guitar and Al Jackson on drums.
As well as their own instrumental numbers they played on hundreds of other records by artists from the Stax stable.
I got to see them many years later as Neil Young's backing band at the SECC in Glasgow

The Mar-Keys - Last Night

Booker T & The MG's - My Sweet Potato

Booker T & The MG's - Zippity Doo Dah