'Green Onions'

Keyboardist Booker T. Jones was 17 years old when he joined with 20-year-olds Steve Cropper, Lewie Steinberg and Al Jackson Jr. as a house band for Stax Records. There, they began by backing up legendary vocalists such as Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett. There are worse ways to earn a living at 17.

Jamming, the group came upon a keyboard riff that they'd later turn into their most famous singular recording, "Green Onions," a single from the album of the same name. It's a song you couldn't avoid even if you tried.

The entire album is a collection of instrumentals borrowing from the R&B they were playing in studio and the stylings of Ray Charles that they heard on the radio.

Along the way, they defined southern and Memphis blues and became one of the first integrated bands on the scene, which is saying something for the early 1960s.

Booker T. and the MGs were a testament to the amount of talent languishing, so to speak, in studios throughout this era. The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and The Wrecking Crew were other examples of backing bands that found a certain amount of fame, but nothing near as to what the MGs found with Green Onions.