Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Booker T. Jones.
Last updated on April 17, 2025.
Booker Taliaferro Jones Jr. is an American musician, songwriter, record producer and arranger, best known as the frontman of the band Booker T. & the M.G.'s. He has also worked in the studios with many well-known artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, earning him a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.
The reason I wanted to become an organ player was because I heard Ray Charles play on Quincy Jones' arrangement of "One Mint Julep." I heard that sound, and it just struck me. I thought that's what I want to do with my life. That's the sound I want to try to make.
Once you strike a note on the organ, it's going to stay with you until you either make it louder or softer or let it go. So it's a little bit like the human voice, so you can put a human characteristic in it.
I was extremely fortunate to live around the corner from a recording studio and to be chosen to have a paper route to make enough money to pay for the music lessons. I was one of the chosen few to have a job and to walk through the curtain at Stax Records was just an amazing thing for me to do at age 14.