You don’t get the true legends of soul music travelling half way around the world to serve as a backing band for someone unless they’ve proven that they have enormous talent.
Pauline and I went to the Perth Concert Hall on Saturday for the final show of Guy Sebastian‘s Memphis Tour. His touring band featured members of the legendary MGs.
You might know Steve “The Colonel” Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn from the Blues Brothers movie or from their work with Booker T and the MGs. Steve Cropper co-wrote songs like Dock of the Bay with Otis Redding as well as co-writing classics like Midnight Hour and Knock on Wood.
They brought fellow Memphis musicians, Lester Snell and Steve Potts with them to Australia and rounded out the band with some amazing Australian musicians.
They performed songs like Soul Man, Hold On I’m Coming, Hard To Handle, Under the Boardwalk, Lets Stay Together and finished up with a fantastic version of Shake Ya Tail Feather.
A highlight for me was when the band gave us a very tasty rendition of the Booker T and the MGs classic instrumental, Green Onions.
I’ve been to dozens of concerts and seen some of the world’s best performing and I’d have to say that this concert would be up there with the very, very best of them. When you get a band like that together the music is never in doubt. Match that level of musicianship with the extraordinary vocal talents of Guy Sebatian and you have an act that would impress audiences anywhere in the world.
If all you’ve ever seen or heard of Guy is his Australian Idol performances and his pop hit singles, as impressive as they are, you haven’t even begun to discover just how good he really is.
Looking around the audience it was obvious that it was a mixture of people who were there to see Guy and those who were there to see some living legends of soul music. I’m sure that those who simply wanted to see the band went home as true Guy Sebatian fans and that Guy’s fans went home totally sold out to soul music.
I interviewed Guy on 98.5 Sonshine FM back in October last year about The Memphis Album and about the upcoming tour. Back then he revealed that the MGs would join him on tour for the first time on Perth radio. The picture in this post was taken at the time of that interview. You can hear about his experience recording the album and working with the legends of soul music by clicking the play button on the audio player in this post.
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