Booker T’s Organ-ized Fun

The M.G.’s veteran keyboards genius, Booker T. Jones, is at Ronnie Scott’s in London's Soho next month (August 14-17) and here’s fantastic track off his very fine new(ish) album Sound The Alarm to get you marching to the head of the queue. On a record of mostly tuneful, modern pop-soul strewn with vocalising guests from Mayer Hawthorne through Anthony Hamilton to Kori Withers (daughter of Bill), this instrumental leaps out at’cha with its driving, uncomplicated sense of, well, FUN.

Fired by a rhythmic riff that carries the slightest hint of I Can’t Turn You Loose’s locomotion, and with a whiff of The In Crowd floating around the edges of Mr Jones’ Hammond organ work, Fun only lasts a few seconds under three minutes, like all the great M.G.’s sides of the ’60s, but like them, you can imagine the band, any band really, jamming on the groove for another 30 minutes with no sense of fatigue. Get happy, indeed.