Hear Before You Die. Booker T. & the M.G.s formed as the house band for Stax Records and provided playbacks for numerous singers, including Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding. During a recording break for Billy Lee Riley, 17-year-old keyboardist Booker T. Jones, guitarist Steve Cropper, Lewie Steinberg on bass and Al Jackson Jr. on drums began messing around with a bluesy organ riff. The president of Stax Records, Jim Stewart, was at the mixing board. He liked what he heard and recorded...