A groove is a groove, no matter the decade.

And so it was that some five decades after Eddie Floyd’s "634-5789" was a hit, a group of teenage girls headed toward the Jefferson Center stage on Thursday night, while Floyd, backed by Booker T. and the MGs, jammed it live.

Floyd, still a dapper and energetic showman at 73, saw the girls dancing in front of him.

"New generation!" he shouted. "Yeah."

By the next song, he had them onstage as the band grooved through "I Never Found A Girl To Love Me Like You."

"That’s called old school meets new school," he said as he began to interact with each of them. "It’s the same school."

A demographically diverse crowd of at least 650 people in the Jeff’s 938-capacity Shaftman Hall agreed. They stayed on their feet for most of Floyd’s short closing set with the MGs.

Last year, Booker T. and the MGs, Floyd and other Memphis artists celebrated the 50th anniversary of Stax records, a label that counted Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett and the Staples Singers among its artists. The MGs were essentially the house band, and prolific songwriters, in the label’s late-1950s early-1960s heyday, scoring their own instrumental hits with "Green Onions," "Hip-Hug Her," "Time Is Tight," "Soul Limbo" and others.

The MGs gave those tunes to the crowd, showing in the opening set that their music stands up today. Bandleader Booker T. Jones remains a melodic giant behind his Hammond organ. Guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn missed a note here and there, but the tone and style that made them in-demand session players are still intact.

Jones, a marvel of taste, had his Leslie cabinets spinning as his notes and chords swelled. Cropper is the original "Soul Man" on guitar, and his nasty blues licks still thrill. Dunn and Steve Potts — a cousin of the MGs original drummer, the late Al Jackson — were locked in tight. And Potts got some on an Afro-Cuban tinged drum solo during "Soul Limbo."

But Floyd stole the show, having sent the crowd into overdrive by the time he and the band kicked into his signature tune, "Knock on Wood."