Al Jackson Jr. (November 27, 1935 – October 1, 1975) – Time Is Tight (1969)

The great Booker T. & the M.G.'s drummer who co-wrote Al Green's Let's Stay Together also co-wrote this soul/funk classic for the Uptight soundtrack.

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Al Jackson Jr. was the phenomenally talented drummer for Stax Records house band Booker T. & the M.G.’s. As a songwriter, he is best known for co-writing the group’s biggest hit “Green Onions” and co-writing Al Green’s classic “Let’s Stay Together” with Green and producer Willie Mitchell.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Jackson began drumming with his father’s swing band at age five. When he was around 14, he joined trumpeter Willie Mitchell’s band, and played with them regularly at Memphis clubs like the Flamingo Room and the all-white Manhattan Club.

Another member of the band was multi-instrumentalist Booker T. Jones, who initially played sax and later bass for Mitchell. After Jones began playing on recording sessions for Satellite Records, which was renamed Stax in 1961, he recommended they also hire Jackson.

Although reluctant to forgo live gigs for studio work, Jackson relented when the label guaranteed him a weekly salary, becoming the first session musician at Stax to earn one. He also retained the right to play outside sessions, which he would do throughout the sixties, primarily on recordings produced by Mitchell.

Jones, Jackson, guitarist Steve Cropper, and bassist Lewie Steinberg (later replaced by Donald “Duck” Dunn) formed Booker T. & the M.G.’s in 1962. Their first record for Stax was the classic R&B instrumental “Green Onions,” which went to #1 R&B and #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 that fall and became one of the most iconic songs of the early sixties in America. It was co-written by all four members of the group, as the majority of their tracks would be in years to come.

After “Green Onions” blew up, they released their third single in early 1963 with the funky jams “Home Grown” b/w “Big Train,” one of their few non-charting records. Another chart miss was the upbeat, superb “Can’t Be Still” (1964).

In early 1965, they were back on the R&B charts with the funky “Boot-Leg,” a #10 hit that they performed live on the TV show Hollywood-A-Go-Go. It was notable for featuring Isaac Hayes on keyboards in place of Jones, who was tied up with his classes studying music at Indiana University at the time and could not make the recording session.

Jackson became known as the “Human Timekeeper” for his amazing drumming prowess. Bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn testified to this in a 2001 interview:

“Al was just the cleanest drummer in the world. The pocket where Al put everything was the real secret of Stax. Every time we recorded, he was 98% correct on just about everything we did. And even today, every drummer I play with asks me, 'What was it like to play with Al Jackson?'.”

Booker T. & the M.G.’s served as Stax’s main house band for most of the sixties, backing hundreds of records by artists including Rufus and Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, Sam and Dave, Albert King, Wilson Pickett, the Soul Children, and Otis Redding.

See our earlier posts on keyboardist Booker T. Jones and guitarist Steve Cropper for more on the group’s history.

All four members co-wrote the laid back jam “Over Easy” for their 1968 album Soul Limbo. The following year, they composed the soundtrack to the Black Power film Uptight (aka Up Tight!), set in the aftermath of MLK’s assassination and exploring the rise of revolutionary politics in the Black community. The group co-wrote the soundtrack’s most memorable song, “Time Is Tight,” which was released as a single in 1969 and reached #7 R&B and #6 on the Hot 100, becoming their second-biggest hit. The superior album version was nearly two minutes longer, with an extended intro and breakdown.

The group split up around the end of the decade, with Jones moving to California, Cropper leaving to open his own Memphis studio, and their final album Melting Pot (1971) mostly recorded at the Record Plant in New York City. Jackson and Dunn remained at Stax as session musician, and Jackson also continued playing sessions for Willie Mitchell, who by now was running Hi Records across town.

For Mitchell’s 1969 album Soul Bag, Jackson co-wrote the stellar funky jam “Set Free” along with Memphis Horns co-founder Andrew Love and Hi Records rhythm guitarist Mabon “Teenie” Hodges.

Jackson co-wrote and played on several of Al Green’s biggest hits for Hi Records, including the chart-topping classics “Let’s Stay Together” and “I’m Still in Love with You.” Some of the other artists Jackson recorded or played with in the early seventies were Isaac Hayes, Tina Turner, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Bill Withers, Jean Knight, Leon Russell, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ann Peebles, Herbie Mann, Major Lance, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, and The Staples Singers.

He was an astute businessman, investing his money in a South Memphis gas station and oil wells, owning eight of them. In 1975, Jackson filed to divorce his wife Barbara. He had a girlfriend on the side, and she was supposedly sleeping with a Memphis police officer. During a violent argument between the two of them that July, Barbara shot Al in the chest, but she claimed self-defense and he declined to press charges.

In late September, all four members of Booker T. & the M.G.’s met in California and planned a three-year reunion, scheduled to start in early 1976. A little more than a week later, on the night of September 30, 1975, Jackson and his friends Eddie Floyd and Stax engineer Terry Manning watched the third Joe Frazier–Muhammad Ali fight (aka the “Thrilla in Manila”) on the big screen at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis.

After the broadcast, Jackson returned home and was confronted by an intruder in his house. According to Barbara, who was found by a passing police officer screaming and crying with her hands tied behind her on the sidewalk at 12:15 am the next morning, a burglar had tied her up, told Al to lie face down, and then shot him five times in the back. The burglar stole some jewelry and the contents of Al’s pockets.

Barbara’s story is complicated by the fact that she was close friends with the R&B singer Denise LaSalle, who had divorced her first husband Bill Jones in 1974 and whose boyfriend at the time was Nate Doyle, a fugitive wanted by the FBI for several violent bank robberies, most recently in Ohio. LaSalle and Doyle were both spotted at the Jacksons’ house earlier that day. Some sources speculated that LaSalle, Doyle, Barbara Jackson, and her boyfriend the Memphis cop were in the house that night, possibly not having expected Al to come home. Police told the press in April, 1976 they were investigating four unnamed suspects.

LaSalle was subsequently indicted by a federal grand jury for harboring Doyle, who died in a shootout with Seattle police ten months later in July, 1976. Jackson’s murder remains officially unsolved to this day. As of the late nineties, Barbara Jackson still lived in the house where Al was killed, but what happened to her after that is unknown. LaSalle died in early 2018.

Happy Heavenly Birthday to the great Al Jackson Jr.

Further info:

“The Mysterious death of Stax heartbeat Al Jackson, Jr,” by Andria Lisle, Grand Royal, 1997.

“The Backroom Funk of Booker T. and the MGs,” by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO Magazine, 2001.

“Murder, music and the Memphis sound of Stax Volt,” Toronto Sun, November 5, 2022.

#soul #funk #Stax #BookerTandtheMGs #AlJacksonJr