There is a staggering amount of music - righteous, unbelievable, get-on-up, get-down, god-almighty soul music - that would not exist were it not for Booker T. Jones and his legendry group, Booker T. & The M.G.'s. As the house band for Memphis record label Stax Records, Booker T. & the M.G.'s helped shape the sound that came to be known as "Memphis soul," or "Southern soul."

Besides the instrumental group's 1962 smash single "Green Onions," the band played on some of the biggest soul, r&b, and pop hits of all time. The band on Rufus Thomas' "Walking The Dog"? Booker T. Sam & Dave's "Soul Man" and "Hold On, I'm Comin'?" Yep, Booker T. Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)" and "Try A Little Tenderness"? You guessed it: Booker T. Wilson Pickett's "In The Midnight Hour"? Right again.

The band's influence runs on-the-way-to-China deep. You can hear Booker T. & the M.G.'s fingerprints and soulful groove all over countless recordings, including ones the band never played on. But Jones doesn't necessarily hear it himself.

"A lot of people tell me that they're influenced. I don't hear it that much," Jones says. But when the band stumbled upon the salacious riff that would become "Green Onions" while in between sessions with Sun Records' rockabilly great Billy Lee Riley, the musicians knew they might be onto something.

"We were kind of looking at each other saying, This is something that might be special," he says. "We were so down-home, you know? We were country boys, we didn't really aspire to have a hit record, but we really liked it. We took it to the radio stations and they really, really liked it. That was kind of the first hint that maybe we could do something."

As a child growing up in Memphis, Jones got his hands on a lot of instruments. He played oboe, saxophone, trombone, piano, and also played organ in church.

"Back then I was influenced by Roy Hamilton and Hank Williams and Ray Charles before I was professionally making music myself," Jones says. "My mom played Chopin in the house, and gospel, and of course my first lessons were Bach. I still play Bach at home, but I listen to Britney Spears, Lady Antebellum, Zack Brown... I listen to so much stuff now. So my influences now are often very young people. Even a band like Grizzly Bear, I like that stuff. There's a lot of good music coming from so many different places, and I'm influenced a little bit by all of it."

That leads to Jones' 2009 platter, "Potato Hole," where the backing band was the roots-rocking Drive-By Truckers and the lead guitar work was handled by Neil Young.

"When we worked together on an album back in the mid-90's," Jones of Young, "I got to spend some time around him and his old black Gibson and his amp, and learn how that music was put together. I just loved it a lot." Young's contributions to the record were heard in Jones' head before the old black Gibson ever got plugged in.

"When I started writing songs for the album, obviously they were rock songs. I wrote the songs on guitar - I have a Fender Strat and I have a Les Paul - and the record label president and my manager, they just started hearing Neil Young playing on the album. And the music originally, I have to say, was inspired by Neil's sound," Jones says.

Yet Jones doesn't feel that he's stepping away from his signature sound. "‘Potato Hole' is a rock album," he says. "But it's also a Booker T. album. It sounds like Booker T. That's what's happening now, I'm having fun just doing what I really, really want to do. I was able to do that album with the Drive-By Truckers and Neil, and that was a really big step for me.

"You know, if you have all these colors on your palette and you're not able to use them for years, then something opens up, which for me was a new record label, you're able to use these colors and step around a little bit," Jones says. "Now I just finished an album with The Roots in New York City and I was able to get some of my hip-hop ideas out with them."

Booker T. & The M.G.'s

Friday, June 18

East Ave/Chestnut St Stage

9 p.m. | Free