Time Is Tight

by Booker T. Jones

  By the time Al’s eyes opened, he had sat up in his chair, turned to one side, and crossed his legs.

  The song continued.

  Mister Charlie, you know I work hard for you,

  And you’re mean to me, just as mean as you can be

  This lyric is a metaphor for institutions of human oppression of all types.

  As a black man and a Stax executive, Al was on both sides of this issue.

  Well, now, you and Ole Man Trouble

  You can’t get me, ’cause my mind is free

  This is about my realization of the unlimited scope of my own inner powers, which are able to overcome the tangible confines of racism.

  Al clasped his hands between his legs, put his head down, closed his eyes. Introspective and compassionate, he may have been torn between his business obligations and his social responsibilities as an African American.

  Well, I get what I need, and I need what I get

  And I ain’t had no need, for nothin’ I couldn’t get yet

  These words were confirming my appreciation and thankfulness for the life I’ve had.

  So, Ole Man Trouble, I’m gonna live like I want to

  And do as I damn well please

  ’Cause my heart is in my song

  And my song is blowin’ in the breeze

  The lyric is affirmation of my acceptance of a new way of life, asserting my new attitude of confidence, freedom, and inner security.

  Stopping the tape, Al said, “Booker, songs like these scare me. I-I don’t know what to say; there’s just something about them that just…I-I-I don’t know man, it just—”

  Some blacks, even some in my own company, were afraid to stand up and speak out. In a split second, I realized that Al and I supported different approaches to the problem of racial oppression. Al’s hands were tied due to his position at Stax.

  I felt the meeting and especially hearing the song were really hard for Al because in so many ways we were surely partners. The truth was, he chose neither to confront nor engage me on our differences that night. At least not at that time. And in 1969, with Dr. King’s body in the ground, timing was everything.

  Before Al could pull his large frame from the chair, I was at the door.

  His face said everything.

  “No problem, Al. I understand. I really do. Sorry to disturb your evening. I’ll get going.”

  “Oh, no! Really, Booker! I’ve spent a lot of time mulling over this issue. I just don’t know if this is the time for Stax to…You know, man, songs like this…they, they have a way of…I don’t want you to think…”

  In that moment, surprised, disappointed, and heartbroken, my past came to an unforeseen, abrupt, disruptive halt—destiny took the reins. Determined to heed my inner voice, I mounted a different steed. Our paths may cross again, but Al Bell and I were on different roads, even if we looked to the same destination.

  I opened the door and stepped onto the porch. I thought, Time is tight. Then, slowly and carefully, I placed each foot down on one of the concrete steps, holding on to the tape of “Ole Man Trouble.” I didn’t look back to see the inevitable compassion on Al’s face. I knew he felt my pain. But he too knew, at that moment, that time was tight. It was time for me to go.

  I rolled down the passenger-side window. “I’ll talk to you, man. I’ll talk to you.”

  I took Union Extended to McLemore Avenue, came in the back door, and entered Stax for the last time. I found the panel and turned the control room lights on, casting a shadow into the dark studio. I had never erased anything before, and I had to think a minute. There was no erase button, only the record button. I put the twenty-four-track tape on the Scully deck, selected the vocal track, and pressed record. Then I put the quarter inch that I played for Al on the two track and pressed record. The two machines erased together.

  I walked down the control room steps in the dark, since in my haste I had neglected to turn on the studio lights. I went home to pack.

  Chapter 13

  Melting Pot

  LOS ANGELES—Summer 1969—1

  I left all my possessions in Memphis and had my ’68 Olds Toronado driven out to California. There was no promise of gold for me in California. No promise of anything at all. However, after word got out that I was in town, I started getting calls to play sessions. Only a few at first, then finally as a song arranger and keyboard man.

  When I first arrived out west, however, I had no vehicle and had to ride with someone absolutely everywhere. I was crammed into a tiny BMW with two friends of Rita’s. Leon Russell drove me to his house after a session to show me his studio. The studio was great. The drive there wasn’t. We went fast up Laurel Canyon Boulevard, which was the only way to get to the San Fernando Valley without going all the way to Hollywood or to Westwood. I never met a more generous guy, though. “If you ever need a studio or a place to stay, it’s yours,” Leon told me. His offer wasn’t lost on me.

  Regardless, being without a car in Los Angeles was like crossing the Sahara without water, so I used a company called LA Driveaway to have my Toronado driven from Memphis. It was supposed to take five days. When the driver finally showed up eight days later, he took forever just to get out from behind the steering wheel and didn’t seem to want to release it to me. I was never so glad to see a car.

  MEMPHIS—1968—9

  I met Leon through my really good friend Mabon “Teenie” Hodges in Memphis in 1968. Teenie and I were still best friends even though he had taken my girlfriend (Evelyn Jones) and, on occasion, my drummer (Al Jackson Jr.).

  Usually, Teenie left his car at my house and we went out together to see new acts and shows at clubs, but this windy, wintry night he didn’t answer his phone. Ike and Tina Turner were at the Rosewood, a few blocks from my house, so I dressed and went alone. They gave me a small table near the front that I shared with a couple I didn’t know. I looked over the room. Standing against the wall was this very light-skinned woman with an enormous Afro wig, larger than any I’d ever seen. And next to her was my friend Teenie—smiling at me as though he was aware of me all the while.

  The woman was white. Teenie had brought a white woman to the Rosewood. Was he out of his mind? No one else in the club seemed to notice, or to mind. Their attention was on the amazing Tina Turner and her dancers.

  Where Teenie went, people stared at him. The way he dressed. His demeanor. They took a table, and I joined them. The woman was Rita Coolidge. Teenie was cheating on my girlfriend with Rita. He flashed that smile and poured me a drink out of his bottle. That smile seemed to get Teenie anywhere he wanted to go. An audition with Willie Mitchell. Tina Turner’s dressing room. He had one of those magnetic personalities.

  At that time, Rita was hanging out with a guy named Don Nix, who played baritone sax in Steve and Duck’s band, The Mar-Keys. Don had been to LA and was crazy about a band he’d met, Delaney & Bonnie, and the musicians in their band. He took them to Stax, and they signed with the company. Rita met Delaney & Bonnie through Don, and they invited her to sing with them.

  Soon after, Teenie and Rita took me to a small rehearsal studio in Memphis—the first time I met Leon Russell. He was the keyboard player in Bonnie and Delanie Bramlett’s band. It was the first time I was in a room of hippies after Monterey. Slowly I realized my friend Teenie was one of them. They greeted me so warmly and enthusiastically, a small part of me secretly fantasized I was one of them. However, that could never be. They all looked so different. Leon—with eye makeup, long hair, a carnival hat, and a nose ring and outrageously dressed in tie-dye, skins, and high boots—was nondescript in the room, which included Carl Radle, Bobby Whitlock, Jerry McGee, Bobby Keys, and probably Chuck Blackwell on drums.

  LOS ANGELES—1969—7

  With Stax in my past, Providence located me in sunny Southern California, leading the unorthodox hippie life and feeling magnificent about the new arrangement.

  Of all the people at Stax I tried to persuade to come to California, Eddie Floyd was my
only taker. No sooner had I rented my house in Beverly Hills than he had a room at the Hyatt on Sunset. Like me, Eddie had been searching. With his natural affinity for creativity, Eddie didn’t hesitate or think twice about offending Stax by following me to California. After all, the injustices had affected him too. Eddie had always been quick to deal with his conflicts. Sometimes too quick. He and Wilson Pickett had gotten into fistfights as members of the Falcons in Detroit. Again, like me, Eddie came from the Deep South, and the inherent beauty of California spoke to him.

  I took my Gibson J-45 that Duck had given me to Eddie’s room, and in no time, we had written “California Girl.” A couple of days later, we had “Never Found a Girl.”

  Eddie hung in Hollywood with me. Mornings in the California sun were intoxicating, and with the pretty girls parading Sunset Boulevard below Eddie’s balcony, Eddie and I were living our dream. Two southern boys, free in Hollywood. Instinctively, we wanted to write a love song. It could be about a girl we fell in love with in this magical place. (Years later I got my California girl.) I started strumming a happy little C chord rhythm on my acoustic guitar. Eddie walked over to the balcony. California girl, you’re living in a different world—in his best, most romantic baritone. I went down to the F chord when he got to the word world. We were doing it. (I repeated the C chord to F chord sequence.) Before Eddie said another word, I played an A minor chord. Another A minor. An A minor suspension. A long D suspension, resolving to a G suspended. A normal G seventh. Till the day I die. Back to the C chord that I began with. We had done it! Without so much as a word to one another. Such was the writing rapport I had with Eddie Floyd. No one would have believed it happened like that. But it did!

  I called a drummer, and we went down into Leon’s studio that night and cut the track for “California Girl” with me playing everything but drums. We didn’t even call anyone at Stax.

  The only problem was, all of Leon’s effusive generosity couldn’t offset the fact that he had a monkey loose in the house (a real monkey!), and the monkey was crazy. Everyone knew it. When Leon wasn’t around, the monkey bared his teeth at me and made me feel certain he would kill me if I ever came back. It might have been the reason Rita finally left Leon. True to his word, though, Leon never asked for a dime. I had Stax send him the equivalent payment for studio time.

  Eddie and I did our songwriting work at his hotel room or at Leon’s house. We couldn’t write at my house in Beverly Hills. It was a madhouse. Rita, who had been living with Leon, moved in with nine cats. Nine cats. The house was always full of her friends. Good people. Just so many of them. Clydie King. Venetta Fields. Claudia Lennear. David Anderle. Marc Benno. Herb Alpert. Jerry Moss. Donna Weiss. Our house was right there off Wilshire and Fairfax. Everybody visited. And used the piano in the living room. Except me.

  I needed at least a modicum of privacy. In Memphis, my proclivity for kicking people out of the room who weren’t directly involved in the writing earned me a reputation. Moreover, I savored solitude, which was nearly impossible to come by there.

  Joe Cocker, broke and homeless after his Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour of the world, spent a few days recuperating on the floor of Rita’s upstairs bedroom. Stephen Stills asked me to play organ on “Love the One You’re With,” but I lay passed out on the couch after too much indulgence, and Stephen had to play the organ solo himself. Graham Nash, dropping in at the session while staying at Stephen’s house, hit on Stephen’s girl, Rita.

  BEVERLY HILLS, CA—1969—5

  With so much energy swirling around, something was certain to give. Our swimming pool was constantly blanketed with large brown fronds whipped off neighbors’ palm trees. The violent winter winds plagued our stay in Beverly Hills, and regularly flung debris from the high-rise construction sites a block away on Wilshire Boulevard. It seemed an omen when a huge block of steel crashed through the french doors of our bedroom one night not long after we moved in.

  Priscilla’s state of mind, volatile at best, became unhinged when I balked at marriage. An ambulance pulled up in front of 6132 Warner Drive in Beverly Hills. It was an unfamiliar destination for them because the home’s owner, Rabbi Max Vorspan, a peace-loving man, was away on sabbatical. He was the least likely Beverly Hills resident to call emergency.

  But the home had different occupants now. I had rented it and was living there with Priscilla, her two children, and her sister, Rita. On this occasion, Priscilla had slashed both her wrists, and Rita and I were wrapping them up with bathroom towels, both scared to death. For months Priscilla had been asking me, grilling me, as to whether I was committed to her. Even before we left Memphis, if there was any hesitation or unsureness from me, a battle ensued, lasting sometimes for days.

  “No, I want to know if you are committed to me, not if you care for me or if you just want to keep seeing me! Why do you need time?” Priscilla screamed.

  The second time Priscilla cut her wrists, the doctor had her admitted again, to the same psychiatric ward as before. I visited her nightly and tried to console her. I took care of Priscilla’s kids, Paul and Laura, on my own, taking them back and forth to their grammar school and supervising their homework. I was doing the shopping, managing the meals, and trying to make a living playing sessions to keep us above water.

  I ignored my inner voice. My will disappeared.

  In no time, it was like Priscilla’s mouth gaped open wide enough, and she swallowed me whole. Body and soul. The light of the sun disappeared. All I could see or feel were the dark, cold, moist walls in the gut of her soul as she washed me down. Instead of a proud eagle flying in the sky, I became a spineless gray lizard, caught in the coil of a charming, relentless, hungry python.

  Nevertheless, wedding invitations went out within days of Priscilla’s release from the hospital.

  The first to respond was San Francisco’s Scott McKenzie, who drove over from his home in Joshua Tree, California. At the wedding, all the women wore flowers in their hair out of compliance with Scott’s song, “Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair.” The ceremony was performed on July 16, 1970, by Priscilla’s father, Reverend R. M. Coolidge, in Beverly Hills, at the home we were renting, and attended by her mother, Charlotte, her sister, Rita, along with Stephen Stills, and my parents, Lurline and Booker T. Jones Sr.

  In attendance was a small cadre of Hollywood locals, mostly friends and associates of Rita’s, including Annie and Terry Rodgers, David and Cheryl Anderle, Marc and Fran Benno, and the ubiquitous Hollywood socialite Bobby Neuwirth. Not in attendance was my sister, Gwen, nor my brother, Maurice.

  I wore a brown suit, Priscilla wore a white dress, and Rita caught the bouquet.

  After our wedding, Priscilla and I rode around the back hills of Southern California in my Olds Toronado, looking for a ranch to buy. Once, I found myself lost in Agoura Hills…trapped in a nest of Hells Angels in a back-mountain valley. I just hastily turned around and backed out—as they glared.

  HOLLYWOOD, Paramount Pictures—1969—7

  With all that driving around, I was beginning to get a sense of the layout of the massive Los Angeles region, and I discovered that my Beverly Hills house was not too far from Paramount over on Melrose. I visited the lot so much working on Uptight, the guard knew my name. Although they owned Stax, Paramount tried their own hands at the music business, initiating Paramount Records in 1969. Walking past the president’s office early in 1970, I heard my name called. I turned back and stepped in. They had been turned down by the Beatles, the man confessed. Not everyone had a price in Hollywood.

  I already had so much respect for the group, but this information increased my appreciation of the band. We had recorded “Lady Madonna,” and now the Beatles’ LP Abbey Road had been released to rave critical reviews. The Beatles had fame. All the accolades. They could have stopped and rested on their laurels, but they didn’t. They kept reaching, for the sake of creativity and the love of music.

  I decided someone should make a statement of gratitude and appreciat
ion.

  “You want to do what?”

  “A tribute to the Beatles’ Abbey Road LP.”

  “Why? You’re an R & B band. It won’t sell.”

  Even though Steve had a previous commitment for sessions in LA, I flew to Memphis to record with Duck and Al. I couldn’t wait. My head was full of the melodies from “Mr. Mustard Seed,” “Because the World Is Round,” and “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” I was rearranging everything to fit the MGs’ four-piece format. I forgot about the cold Memphis weather and froze walking to and from the studio. To make matters worse, my rental car was gone—stolen. I had parked it over on College Street because there were no spaces on McLemore. Outside, I blew warm air on my hands. There was no time to buy a coat.

  We started the sessions with only three pieces, leaving room for guitar parts and leads. I memorized Steve’s parts and immediately flew back out to LA and walked him through his overdubs. It wasn’t “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” There were suspensions, seventh chords, uneven bar lengths, and other surprises and aberrations. The Beatles had grown up musically, and I wanted to document it.

  It was so much fun to play musically advanced rock and roll instrumentals.

  HOLLYWOOD, Wally Heider Studio—1969—5

  A few months later, I remember walking out onto Cahuenga Boulevard, out of the Booker T. & the MGs session. There had been laughter and happiness inside; the band was jovial. On the sidewalk, I lit a Salem and noted a strange sensation that I seemed to be on the wrong side of the street.

  Everybody was happy but me. I had left Memphis, and Stax Records, but I hadn’t quit the MGs. Now I wanted to leave the MGs.

  All the new original material we tried to come up with that day, and for every session before that for as long as I could remember, sounded like a lame imitation of one of our previous hits. “Green Onions,” “Hip Hug-Her,” or whatever. Nobody seemed to notice that. Not Steve. Not even Al. Everybody was flush with success and money.