Steve Cropper, the lean, soulful guitarist and songwriter who helped anchor the celebrated Memphis backing band Booker T. and the M.G.’s at 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.
Pat Mitchell Worley, president and CEO of the Soulsville Foundation, said Cropper’s family told her that Cropper died on Wednesday in Nashville. The foundation operates the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis, located at the site of the former Stax Records, where Cropper worked for years.
A cause of death was not immediately known. Longtime associate Eddie Gore said he was with Cropper on Tuesday at a rehabilitation facility in Nashville, where Cropper had been after a recent fall. Cropper had been working on new music when Gore visited, he said.
“He’s such a good human,” Gore said. “We were blessed to have him, for sure.”
Rolling Stone magazine ranked Cropper 39th on its 100 Greatest Guitarists list, calling him “the secret ingredient in some of the greatest rock and soul songs.”
The guitarist, songwriter and record producer was not known for flashy playing, but his spare, catchy licks and solid rhythm chops 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 that rare white artist willing to keep a lower profile and collaborate.
Cropper’s name was immortalized in the 1967 smash Soul Man, recorded by Sam & Dave. Midway, singer Sam Moore calls out “Play it, Steve!” as Cropper pulls off a tight, ringing riff, a slide sound that Cropper used a Zippo lighter to create.
The exchange was reenacted in the late 1970s when Cropper joined the backing band for the Blues Brothers, formed by Canadian Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, while they were both Saturday Night Live cast members. The first Blues Brothers album, Briefcase Full of Blues, reached No. 1 on the Billboard album charts.
Cropper was also in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers and its followup, Blues Brothers 2000, portraying “The Colonel” in the band. In real life, he toured with them.
Lauded by other guitar players
In a 2020 interview with The Associated Press, Cropper discussed his career and how he mastered the art of filling gaps with an essential lick or two.
“I listen to the other musicians and the singer,” Cropper said. “I’m not listening to just me. I make sure I’m sounding OK before we start the session. Once we’ve presented the song, then I listen to the song and the way they interpret it. And I play around all that stuff. That’s what I do. That’s my style.”
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, asked once about Cropper, said simply: “Perfect, man.” On a YouTube instructional video, guitar virtuoso Joe Bonamassa says Cropper’s moves are often copied.
“If you haven’t heard the name Steve Cropper, you’ve heard him in song,” Bonamassa said.
Cropper was born near Dora, Mo., but moved with his family to Memphis when he was nine and got his first mail-order guitar at age 14, according to his website, playitsteve.com. 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 Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton had founded as Satellite Records in 1957.
In the early 1960s, Satellite signed up Cropper and his instrumental band the Royals Spades. The band soon changed its name to the Mar-Keys and had a hit with Last Night.
Satellite soon was later 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 M.G.’s, featuring Cropper, keyboard player Booker T. Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bass player Donald (Duck) Dunn, the latter also a Blues Brothers backing member.
The group were known for their hit instrumentals Green Onions, Hang’em High and Time Is Tight, and backed Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and other Stax artists.
The racially integrated band — a rarity in its day — was so admired that even non-Stax artists recorded with them, notably Wilson Pickett.
“When you walked in the door at Stax, there was absolutely no colour,” Cropper said in the AP interview. “We were all there for the same reason — to get a hit record.”
WATCH | Booker T. Jones in conversation with CBC’s Q in 2015:
In the mid-1960s, Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler brought Pickett to work with the Stax musicians.
Cropper found some gospel recordings by Pickett, was taken by the line “I’ll see my Jesus in the midnight hour” and, with a slight change, helped write a secular standard.
“The man up there has been forgiving me for this ever since!” he said.
Branching out after Stax
Eddie Floyd’s Knock on Wood was also co-written by Cropper. Now a soul standard, the 1966 song was adapted a dozen years later for a popular disco version by Amii Stewart.
Stax would be affected by tragedies just four months apart.
In an interview on his website, Cropper recalled collaborating on (Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay, brooding, folkish departure for Redding recorded shortly before the singer’s death in a December 1967 plane crash in Wisconsin. Six others were also killed, included four members of Stax’s Bar-Kays, who were backing Redding on tour.
The song reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts in early 1968.
“We had been looking for the crossover song,” he said. “This song, we knew we had it.”
In April 1968, the shooting death of civil rights activist Martin Luther King in Memphis resulted in less bonhomie between Black and white musicians at the label, several later told Canadian historian Rob Bowman for his 1997 book, Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records.
“So sad to hear of the passing of our dear friend Steve Cropper today. His soulful guitar playing, songwriting, and record productions inspired us to be a soul band when we were teens and eventually led us to work with him in Memphis on our 2nd, and one of our best selling albums pic.twitter.com/xAYM5iRcbt
Cropper released a solo album for Stax in 1969 and a jam session album the same year with labelmate guitar players Albert King and Roebuck (Pops) Staples. But he would leave the label, which would not survive financial issues later in the decade, in the early 1970s.
During the next two decades, he appeared on or produced albums for a wide range of artists, including John Lennon, Rod Stewart, Neil Sedaka, Yvonne Elliman, Tower of Power and John Prine.
Cropper was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 as a member of Booker T. and the M.G.’s. That year, Cropper, Dunn and Jones played in an all-star tribute at Madison Square Garden to Bob Dylan.
Jones is the last surviving member of the group. Dunn died in 2012, while Jackson was fatally shot in in 1975.
Cropper was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005, and two years later received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.
Cropper continued recording into his later years, including 2024’s Friendlytown, which was nominated for a Grammy.
According to a Reuters report, Cropper is survived by his wife, Angel, along with his children Andrea, Cameron, Stevie and Ashley.
