You know that for years, the hold music on the phone lines of Richard C. Young’s companies has been Green Onions by Booker T. and the MGs, including the late Steve Cropper on guitar. When the song went up, Dick Young had one question for me, “Where’s Steve?”
If you listen closely to the version you hear over the phone, you won’t hear Steve Cropper’s decorative guitar lines, which he interspersed over Booker T.’s Hammond M3 organ playing and Al Jackson Jr.’s drum lines.
It turns out, the digital compression of today’s telephones ate up Steve Cropper’s guitar lines, making them indecipherable to the ear. It’s a shame.
Dick has always impressed upon me (and everyone else) the value of analog sound played over high-quality vinyl, and if the loss of one of the great all-time guitar players from one of the greatest all-time songs doesn’t make you a believer in the power of vinyl records, nothing will.
Dick wrote in 2007:
Laurent & Villchur…
Back in 1967, Acoustic Research’s demonstration room on Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was ground zero for state-of-the-art high fidelity. My experiences in Cambridge led me to buy the Acoustic Research AR3 speakers and AR turntable that I am playing today, four decades later, as I write to you. And I am also using the same Dynaco PAT-4 preamplifier and Dyna Stereo 120 power amplifier that first powered my AR3s 40 years ago. AR’s founder Edgar Villchur and Dynaco designer Ed Laurent were the legendary forces behind this ground-breaking equipment. Today, as I play Johnny Lytle’s The Loop, Jack McDuff’s Tough ’Duff and The Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers, the sound from vinyl is every bit as warm and enjoyable as it was with my earliest AR/Dynaco experiences back in the 1960s
Vinyl for Warmth
CDs were never collectible and never matched vinyl for warmth. I own a number of high-fidelity systems, including a dearly priced and excellent Conrad Johnson-based reference system. But for day-to-day listening, I turn on my AR/Dynaco system and records—no question about it.
45-RPM Tops
All of this, of course, flies in the face of music industry hype for CDs and downloads, the ultimate in a low-fidelity music experience for the masses. While perfect for jogging and the Wal-Mart experience, this is not high fidelity. And the cherry on the cake of my musical high-fidelity experience for you is the revelation that sound from a properly mastered 45-RPM record is best of all. If you ever saw the classic 1982 movie Diner, you may remember the scene in which Shrevie utters, “Every one of my records means something.” Vinyl was and remains the way to go. What I find most encouraging is that young listeners are coming into the vinyl market every day.
If you can’t get your hands on a copy of Green Onions, or don’t have the luxury of owning a turntable pumped through a classic tube system, you can enjoy the song below in its official audio, including Booker T., Al Jackson Jr., and, of course, Steve Cropper’s guitar lines.
