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" Green Onions" is an instrumental composition recorded in 1962 by Booker T. & the M.G.'s. One of the most popular soul music songs ever, and R&B instrumentals of its era, it utilizes a twelve-bar blues progression and features a rippling Hammond organ line played by frontman Booker T. Jones, who wrote it when he was 17, although the recording was largely improvised in the studio.
The track was originally issued on the Volt label (a subsidiary of Stax Records) as the B-side of "Behave Yourself" on Volt 102; it was quickly as the A-side of Stax 127, and it also appeared on the album of the same name that same year. The organ sound of the song became a feature of the "Memphis soul sound".
After recording, Cropper contacted Scotty Moore at Sun Records to cut a record. He then took the record to a DJ on the Memphis station WLOK, who played "Green Onions" on air. Due to positive reaction of the public to the song, it was quickly re-released as an A-side.
According to Booker T. Jones, the composition was originally to be called "Funky Onions", but the sister of Jim Stewart thought it "sounded like a cuss word"; it was therefore renamed "Green Onions". According to Cropper, the title is not a marijuana reference; rather, the track is named after a cat known as Green Onions, whose way of walking inspired the riff. On a broadcast of the radio program Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! on June 24, 2013, Jones was asked about the title and said, "The bass player thought it was so funky, he wanted to call it 'Funky Onions', but they thought that was too low-class, so we used 'Green Onions' instead."
| May 1962 |
| September 1962 |
| March 1967 |
| Australia (Kent Music Report) | 73 |
| Canada (CHUM Chart) | 39 |
| US Billboard Hot 100 | 3 |
| US Billboard Hot R&B Sides | 1 |
| US Cash Box | 3 |
| US Billboard Hot 100 | 53 |
| US Cash Box | 34 |
The song was sampled for Maxi Priest and Shaggy's 1996 recording of "That Girl" from Priest's album Man with the Fun. Rock band Deep Purple covered part of the song for their 2021 album Turning to Crime as part of the song "Caught in the Act", the band had also performed the song live in previous years. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers occasionally played it in concert, and a 1997 performance recorded at The Fillmore in San Francisco was released on the 2009 album The Live Anthology.
Sonny Boy Williamson's 1963 recording "Help Me" was based on "Green Onions" and features Willie Dixon performing an double bass riff very similar to the riff in "Green Onions" performed by Lewie Steinberg.
In 1999, "Green Onions" was given a Grammy Hall of Fame Award.
It was voted number 5 in the All-Time Top 100 Singles from Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. Larkin stated the song was "an incredible, unrepeatable piece of music, copied by millions but never remotely challenged".
In 2012, it was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, a list of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" American sound recordings.
"Green Onions" was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2018, as one of the five new entrants in the "Classic of Blues Recording (Song)" category.
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