The Mar-Keys

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

The Mar-Keys were an American studio band for Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee, formed in 1958 as the label's first house band. Their accompaniment formed the basis of the early Stax sound of the 1960s. The members began in high school as the Royal Spades. The mother of tenor saxophonist Packy Axton, Estelle Axton, ran the label Satellite, the forerunner of Stax, with her brother, and she persuaded the group to take the name Mar-Keys.

Music and breakthrough

Their best-known recording is Last Night from 1961, a song carried by organ and saxophone. It reached number three in the United States and sold more than a million copies. On that recording Steve Cropper, normally a guitarist, played second keyboards, because producer Chips Moman did not want a guitar. Also heard were Packy Axton, trumpeter Wayne Jackson and Jerry Lee Smoochy Smith. A second hit never came, but the name lived on.

Influence

The originally white group was replaced in the studio by session musicians. As a result the name Mar-Keys became the name of Stax's mixed house band, with a changing line-up. Those players, including Steve Cropper, Donald Duck Dunn and Al Jackson Jr., accompanied dozens of artists, among them Otis Redding, Carla Thomas and Wilson Pickett. In 1962 Cropper, Jackson and Booker T. Jones also began recording as Booker T. & the M.G.'s. Songs with horns were released under the name Mar-Keys, songs without horns under that of the M.G.'s. The Mar-Keys therefore belong to the foundations of Memphis soul.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1961Last Night!
• 1962Do the Pop-Eye
• 1966The Great Memphis Sound
• 1969Damifiknow!
• 1971Memphis Experience