MEMPHIS, TN– Steve Cropper, the lean, soulful guitarist and songwriter who helped anchor Booker T. and MG’s iconic Memphis backing band on Stax Records and co-wrote the classic songs “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 her 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 label, where Cropper worked for years.
The guitarist, songwriter and record producer wasn’t known for flashy playing, but his catchy licks and powerful rhythm chops helped define Memphis soul music. His name was immortalized in the song “Soul Man”, which Sam recorded in 1967 & Dave. Halfway through, singer Sam Moore calls out “Play it, Steve!” As Cropper pulls out a tight, distinctive chime, a sliding sound that Cropper used a Zippo lighter to create. The exchange was reenacted in the late 1970s when Cropper joined the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd band “The Blues Brothers” and played on their hit cover of “Soul Man.”
Cropper was born near Dora, Missouri, but moved with his family to Memphis when he was nine and got his first guitar in the mail 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 called Stax, which Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton founded as Satellite Records in 1957. In the early 1960s, Satellite recorded with Cropper and his band the Royals Spades. The band soon changed their name to Mar-Keys and had a hit with the funky song “Last Night.” The satellite was soon renamed Stax. The California company of the same name has threatened legal action.
At Stax, some Mar-Keys became the horn section of the label while Cropper and other Mar-Keys eventually formed Booker T. and the MG’s. Featuring Cropper, keyboardist Booker T. Jones, bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, drummer Al Jackson, Booker T, and the M.J. Band. They were known for their instrumental hits “Green Onions”, “Hang ‘Em High” and “Time Is Tight”, and backed Otis Redding and Sam. & Dave and other artists. The racially integrated band, a rarity in its day, was so admired that even non-Stax artists recorded with them, notably Wilson Pickett.
In the mid-1960s, Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler brought Pickett to Memphis to work with the Stax musicians. During a 2015 meeting with the National Association of Music Publishers, Cropper admitted that he had never heard of Pickett before working with him. He found some Gospel recordings of Beckett, was taken by the line “I’ll see Jesus at midnight” and with a slight change helped write a secular standard.
“The guy over there has been forgiving me for this 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 MG’s. That same year, Cropper, Dunne and Jones were part of the house band for an all-star tribute at Madison Square Garden to Bob Dylan, with other performers including Neil Young, George Harrison and Stevie Wonder. (The Jacksons died in 1975, 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.”
He played guitar on songs by Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett and many others, but was especially close to Redding. In an interview on his website, Cropper recalled the collaboration on “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay,” which was completed shortly before Redding’s death in a plane crash in December 1967 and Accident No. 1 in 1968.
The brooding ballad was a departure from Redding’s distinct soul sound and a bittersweet reflection on his triumphant appearance a few months earlier at the Monterey Pop Festival. Cropper will remember adding the finishing touches to the recording while still mourning Redding.
“We were looking for the crossover song,” he said. “This song, we knew we had it.”
Cropper was in the 1980 film “The Blues Brothers” and its follow-up “Blues Brothers 2000” in which he played “The Colonel” of the Blues Brothers band. In real life, he toured with them.
He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 in New York City, and two years later received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.
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Online: http://playitsteve.com