[.ca] Melting Pot

5 stars is not enough:
In all honesty, there aren't enough stars to rate this stellar album. Unfortunately, the last by these four members of Booker T. & the MGs. Booker T. Jones plays his B-3 organ with unbelievable fire and passion. Steve Cropper's rhythm and lead guitar is just unrivaled. Duck Dunn lays down some of his most inspiring bass lines ever, and as always, the perfect time keeping of the great Al Jackson, Jr. on drums makes this album a sonic delight from beginning to end. It opens with, in my opinion, the greatest piece of music ever recorded, the title cut, "Melting Pot". From start to finish it is perhaps, the most fitting example of each member's equal contribution to the sound and soul of the band. Four guys doing four distinctive things, with it all coming together like magic, and all the while, none of them having enough of an ego to detract from the other. Tragic circumstances made this the last outing by these four, and the direction they were going in here makes it all the more tragic. However, this was certainly a perfect crowning achievement for the group. Not many bands can go out as they came in. On fire.

Finishing Off In A Blaze of Unsung Glory:
It was the last album of the classic lineup (almost - see below) and they went out, for the most part, in a blaze of glory which probably surprised fans of both their easy-grooving, compact instrumental workouts and all the work they had put in as the funkiest backing band in deep Southern soul. The remarkable achievement was that Booker T. & the MGs let their adventurism run free without burying entirely the foundation that got them there in the first place - the deep, wide, spine-slicing groove of bassist Duck Dunn and drummer Al Jackson, Jr.; the spare, effective chords and licks of guitarmeister Steve Cropper (who could also, in fact, take a short solo turn with the best of them and never forgot the blues entirely); and, the magisterially funky keyboard beds and punctuations of Booker T. Jones. The title cut alone is worth the price of the ticket, a swirling, rolling union of esoteric, dreamy jazz and steady rolling funk whose simplicity and modal melodiousness beats damn near all the ill-begotten "fusion" movement hollow and doesn't let you out of its allure for its entire eight minute run. (Guitar chauvinists, please note - Cropper's brief solo turn here could be an object lesson of "less is more"; he nudges out, simply, a spare solo the shredmeisters would have nervous breakdowns trying to nail.) Almost as effective is the equal-length, soul blues workout "Kinda Easy Like," admittedly a kind of "Green Onions" played inside out but oh, what a groove they cut - and if, as I suspect, it's unearthed from their earlier days with original bassist Lewie Steinberg, well, maybe Lewie wasn't Duck Dunn, but he certainly knew how to lay down the blues bottom without obstructing the feeling; and, anyway, you're too busy enjoying the themes and punctuations Jones and Cropper lay across Steinberg's bottom and Jackson's crackling beat to nitpick. The rest of the album veers between the two ends of the two longer cuts with equivalent grace and power, and by the time it's over you mourn the breakup of the band and even more so the fact that his still-unsolved murder (in 1976) means that, without Jackson, no regrouping of this exquisite outfit will ever sound quite the same. And you also realise that, of any and everything they did in a long and distinguished career, "Melting Pot" deserved way better than its original weak (on their terms) sales got them. You won't even mind the one or two legitimately lesser moments, so gripping is the meat of the album.

Finest music ever recorded:
At the risk of being accused of hyperbole, I can honestly say that the track "Melting Pot" is the finest piece of music I've ever heard. There simply are not words (at least not in my lexicon) to describe its sublime brilliance. I fell in love with this track (and the rest of the album - especially "Fuquawi" and "Kinda Easy Like") nearly 30 years ago now (it was about three years old at the time and already deleted - ridiculously enough). I've heard a great deal of amazing music since then, both new and old, but absolutely nothing touches this. In my opinion this is far and away the best album Booker T and the MGs ever made. The reviewer who said they went out in a blaze of unsung glory with this is absolutely right. They (and this album in particular) are still underrated, but at least the group have had some serious recognition now, and all or most of their material is available. Their music should live on forever.

A SEVENTIES CLASSIC !:
All I have to say 'bout "Melting Pot" is "Wow!" A great all-round disc, one of the best from Booker T & the MG's. It is one of the very first records I bought, in the seventies. If I remember correctly, the LP was about 50 cents in a small record store, a few scratches were included at no extra cost. The rhythm section of Booker T was, at the time, known as one of the most outstanding of all the U.S. (rhythm sections of fame included Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice of Vanilla Fudge, among others). "Melting Pot" is a good transfer on CD (Stax did a great job in the re-issue of a seventies classic).

A jazzy, uneven swan song:
"Melting Pot" was the MG's last album with their original classic line-up (Steve Cropper, Booker T. Jones, Duck Dunn, Al Jackson). It's basically them stretching out in the studio. The songs are longer than usual and the style is jazzier than on any of their previous records. The song "Melting Pot" is great but the other tracks aren't nearly as memorable and some are almost instantly forgettable. This is an album that completists will want but that newcomers should avoid.

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