Booker T and the MGs were essentially the house band of Stax Records, playing on hits for such soul giants as Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Sam & Dave. Their own moment in the sun came in 1962 when they enjoyed a worldwide smash with Green Onions, a halting, twitchy blues-soul instrumental composed by the then 17-year-old band-leader Booker T Jones.

Forty-seven years on, the avuncular Jones sported a pork-pie hat and a broad grin as he sat behind his Hammond organ at this rare UK show. His star is in the ascendant once more: his new album Potato Hole, his first solo release in two decades, features backing from Athens, the Drive-By Truckers and Neil Young.

Accompanied here by guitarists and bassists from the Fabulous Thunderbirds and the Black Crowes, Jones dished out Green Onions a mere four songs into the show, then embarked on a two-hour set of gnarled, knotty blues workouts punctuated by his terse, tinny Hammond. Tracks such as Born Under a Bad Sign and Hip Hug Her were sturdy echoes of a time long gone, when R&B meant the Muscle Shoals rather than Beyoncé.

Jones, a dextrous keyboardist and likably laconic MC, turned Hang 'Em High into the blues as imagined by Ennio Morricone, then unveiled a competent alto growl on a poignant cover of Redding's Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. A bizarre trawl through Outkast's Hey Ya was less successful, with Jones's organ too limited a tool to replicate the trippy fun of Andre 3000's helium vocal, but a raucous encore mugging of Sam & Dave's Hold On I'm Coming left a reverential crowd pleased to have witnessed a musical history lesson.