Guitarist, songwriter and record producer Steve Cropper poses on Wednesday, December 2, 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Mark Humphrey/AP
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Mark Humphrey/AP
MEMPHIS, Tennessee – Steve Cropper, the lanky, soulful guitarist and songwriter who helped anchor legendary Memphis backing band Booker T and the MGs to Stax Records and co-wrote the classics “Green Onions,” “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” and “In the Midnight Hour,” has died. He was 84 years old.
Pat Mitchell Worley, president and CEO of the Soulsville Foundation, said Cropper’s family told them Cropper died Wednesday in Nashville. The foundation operates the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis, located on the site of the former Stax Records, where Cropper worked for years.
The cause of death could not be immediately known. Longtime collaborator Eddie Gore said he was with Cropper on Tuesday at a rehab facility in Nashville, where Cropper was after a recent fall. He said, Cropper was working on new music when Gore visited.
“He’s a very nice person,” Gore said. “We were certainly blessed to have him.”
The guitarist, songwriter and record producer was not known for flashy playing, but his spare, catchy style and solid harmonies helped define Memphis soul music. At a time when it was common for white musicians to co-opt the work of black artists and make more money from their songs, Cropper was the rare white artist willing to keep a low profile and collaborate.
‘Play it, Steve!’
Cropper’s name was immortalized in the 1967 smash “Soul Man”, recorded by Sam & Dave. In the middle, singer Sam Moore says, “Play it, Steve!” As Cropper pulls out a tight, ringing riff, a slide sound is created which Cropper used a Zippo lighter to create. This exchange resumed in the late 1970s when Cropper joined the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act “The Blues Brothers” and played on their hit cover of “Soul Man”.
In a 2020 interview with the Associated Press, Cropper discussed his career and how he mastered the art of filling the gaps with one or two essentials.
“I listen to other musicians and singers,” Cropper said. “I’m not just listening to myself. Before I start the session I make sure my voice is fine. Once we present the song, I listen to the song and the way they interpret it. And I play around all those things. That’s what I do. That’s my style.”
When Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards was once asked about Cropper, he simply said, “Right, man.” In a YouTube instructional video, guitarist Joe Bonamassa says that Cropper’s moves are often imitated.
“If you haven’t heard the name Steve Cropper, you’ve heard him in songs,” Bonamassa said.
He got his first guitar at the age of 14
Cropper was born near Dora, Missouri, but moved with his family to Memphis when he was 9, according to his website, playitsteve.com, and at age 14 he got his first mail-order guitar. Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed and Chet Atkins were among his early influences.
Cropper was a Stax artist before the label was even called Stax, which was founded as Satellite Records in 1957 by Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. In the early 1960s, Satellite signed Cropper and his instrumental band the Royals Spades. The band soon changed their name to the Mar-Keys and had a hit with “Last Night”.
Satellite was soon renamed Stax, where some of the Mar-Keys became the label’s horn section, while Cropper and other Mar-Keys formed Booker T. and the MGs. With Cropper, keyboard player Booker T. Jones, bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn and drummer Al Jackson, they were known for their hit instrumentals “Green Onions,” “Hang ‘Em High” and “Time Is Tight” and backed Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and others.
The racially integrated band, rare in its time, was so admired that even non-Stax artists recorded with them, most notably Wilson Pickett. Jones, who is the only surviving member of the band, and Jackson Black. Dunn and Cropper are white.
“When you walked in the door of Stax, there was no color,” Cropper said in an AP interview. “We were all there for the same reason – to get a hit record.”
inspired by gospel song
In the mid-1960s, Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler brought Pickett in to work with Stax musicians. During a 2015 gathering with the National Music Publishers Association, Cropper admitted that he had never heard of Pickett before working with him. He found some gospel recordings by Pickett, took the line “I’ll see my Jesus at midnight” and helped write a secular standard with slight changes.
“The guy over there has been forgiving me about it ever since!” He said.
Cropper was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 as a member of Booker T. and the MGs. That year, Cropper, Dunn and Jones performed in an all-star tribute concert to Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden. Al Jackson died in 1975 and Dunn in 2012.
Rolling Stone magazine ranked Cropper 39th on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists, calling him “the secret ingredient in some of the greatest rock and soul songs.”
Cropper was especially close to Redding. In an interview on his website, Cropper recalled the collaboration on “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay”, completed shortly before Redding’s death in a December 1967 plane crash and the No. 1 hit in 1968.
The reflective, folky ballad was a bittersweet reflection on their triumphant appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival a few months ago. Cropper remembers finalizing the recording while still mourning Redding.
“We were looking for a crossover song,” he said. “This song, we knew we had it.”
Cropper played “The Colonel” in the Blues Brothers Band in the 1980 film “The Blues Brothers” and the subsequent film “Blues Brothers 2000”. In real life, he toured with them.
In 2005 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and two years later he received a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Cropper continued recording in his later years, including 2024’s “Friendlytown”, which was nominated for a Grammy. Earlier this year, Cropper received the Tennessee Governor’s Arts Award, the state’s highest honor in the arts.
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