The organist who shaped the sound of Stax Records is playing downtown Riverhead this weekend. Booker T. Jones brings his quartet to The Suffolk at 118 East Main Street on Sunday, October 25 at 7 p.m., with tickets running $45 to $89.
The Hammond B3 up front
Jones led Booker T. and the M.G.'s, the house band at Memphis's Stax Records, and his Hammond B3 organ carried the group's instrumentals onto the charts. The Suffolk's program for the night is built around that instrument: Green Onions, Time Is Tight and Melting Pot anchor the set, alongside vocal numbers including Born Under a Bad Sign, the blues standard Jones co-wrote and that Albert King first recorded.
The venue's billing also promises stories between the songs, drawn from Jones's work with Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Bob Dylan. Jones is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee with Booker T. and the M.G.'s and holds a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the M.G.'s, an integrated band in 1960s Memphis, backed much of the Stax catalog that still fills radio playlists today.
A supper club night on Main Street
The Suffolk, the restored 1933 movie house on East Main Street, runs the show in its supper club format: tickets are sold by the table, and seating within each tier is first come, first served. The room pairs the show with food and drink service, and the venue notes that backpacks and large bags are not permitted.
The booking lands in a week when the theater's calendar swings wide, with Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox on Thursday and tribute nights on Friday and Saturday, but Sunday's show is the one with a direct line to the records themselves.
If you go
Booker T. Jones, Quartet Live in Concert, plays The Suffolk, 118 East Main Street, Riverhead, on Sunday, October 25 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $45 to $89 through thesuffolk.org, and the box office is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

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