Time Is Tight: My Life, Note by Note

Legendary Memphis musician Jones—leader of Stax Records house band Booker T and the MGs—doesn’t skip a beat in his soulful memoir. Born in Memphis, Tenn., in 1944, Jones discovered music early, starting on clarinet as a fourth grader playing in the junior high school band before moving on to piano and organ, playing so well that, by age 12, he was playing church tea parties, where he once accompanied gospel great Mahalia Jackson. A consummate storyteller, Jones tells of his early days at Stax and of producing his first, and still best-known, song, “Green Onions.” Throughout his career, he worked with Rita Coolidge, Bob Dylan, and Otis Redding (“Otis was made for singing heartbreaking songs, and I was made for writing unrelentingly unconventional verse and bridge changes”), among others. Jones affectionately interweaves stories about his children as well as his mother, whose 1977 death made Jones realize that “life is a song sung between the verses... and to grasp it you let it slip through your fingers.” He concludes triumphantly in 2012, when, as music director for the PBS special In Performance at the White House, President Obama told him he’d like to enter the room to “Green Onions” instead of “Hail to the Chief.” Jones’s fluid and melodious prose sings with powerful emotion. (Oct.)