Booker T And The MGs’ original bassist Lewie Steinberg has died aged 82, the Stax Museum has confirmed.
The late musician joined iconic blues label Stax Records in 1961 for bass duties with the studio’s session band, the Mar-Keys.
A year later, drummer Al Jackson Jr and organist Booker T Jones jammed a riff they had been playing in clubs prior to recording a jingle. Co-owner Jim Stewart recorded them and helped them write what would become Booker T And The MGs’ R&B chart-topping hit, Green Onions.
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Steinberg appeared on the band’s 1962 debut full-length album, Green Onions and 1965 follow-up Soul Dressing. He was eventually replaced by Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn – though he was inducted alongside his former bandmates in the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2002.
Jones and Cropper are the only men still alive from Booker T And the MGs. Jackson was murdered in 1975 and Dunn died while on the road in Japan in 2012.
