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, mentioned Cropper’s household instructed her that Cropper died on Wednesday in Nashville. The basis operates the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis, situated on the web site of the previous Stax Records, the place Cropper labored for years.
The guitarist, songwriter and report producer was not identified for flashy enjoying, however his spare, catchy licks and stable rhythm chops helped outline Memphis soul music. His very identify was immortalized within the 1967 smash “Soul Man,” recorded by Sam & Dave. Midway, singer Sam Moore calls out “Play it, Steve!” as Cropper pulls off a characteristically tight, ringing riff, a slide sound that Cropper used a Zippo lighter to create. The change was reenacted within the late Nineteen Seventies when Cropper joined the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act “The Blues Brothers” and performed on their hit cowl of “Soul Man.”
Cropper was born close to Dora, Missouri, however moved along with his household to Memphis when he was 9 and bought his first mail-order guitar at age 14, in line with his web site, playitsteve.com. Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed and Chet Atkins have been amongst his early influences.
Cropper was a Stax artist earlier than the label was even referred to as Stax, which Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton had based as Satellite Records in 1957. In the early Nineteen Sixties, Satellite signed up Cropper and his instrumental band the Royals Spades. The band quickly modified its identify to the Mar-Keys and had a success with the funky “Last Night.” Satellite quickly was renamed Stax; a California label with the identical identify had threatened authorized motion.
At Stax, among the Mar-Keys grew to become the label’s horn part whereas Cropper and different Mar-Keys finally shaped Booker T. and the MG’s. Featuring Cropper, keyboard participant Booker T. Jones, bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn and drummer Al Jackson, Booker T. and the M.G.’s have been identified for his or her hit instrumentals “Green Onions,” “Hang ‘Em High” and “Time Is Tight,” and backed Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and different artists. The racially built-in band, a rarity in its day, was so admired that even non-Stax artists recorded with them, notably Wilson Pickett.
In the mid-Nineteen Sixties, Atlantic Records govt Jerry Wexler introduced Pickett to Memphis to work with the Stax musicians. During a 2015 gathering with the National Music Publishers Association, Cropper acknowledged he had by no means heard of Pickett earlier than working with him. He discovered some gospel recordings by Pickett, was taken by the road “I’ll see my Jesus within the midnight hour” and with a slight change helped write a secular normal.
“The man up there has been forgiving me for this ever since!” he mentioned.
Cropper was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 as a member of Booker T. and the M.G.’s. The similar yr, Cropper, Dunn and Jones have been a part of the home band for an all-star tribute at Madison Square Garden to Bob Dylan, with different performers together with Neil Young, George Harrison and Stevie Wonder. (Al Jackson died in 1975, Dunn in 2012).
Rolling Stone journal ranked Cropper thirty ninth on its 100 Greatest Guitarists checklist, calling him “the secret ingredient in some of the greatest rock and soul songs.”
He performed guitar on hits by Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett and plenty of others, however was particularly near Redding. In an interview on his web site, Cropper recalled collaborating on “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay,” accomplished shortly earlier than Redding’s demise in a December 1967 aircraft crash and a No. 1 hit in 1968.
The brooding, folkish ballad was a departure from Redding’s signature soul sound and a bittersweet reflection on his triumphant look just a few months earlier on the Monterey Pop Festival. Cropper would keep in mind including the ultimate touches on the recording whereas nonetheless grieving for Redding.
“We had been looking for the crossover song,” he mentioned. “This song, we knew we had it.”
Cropper was within the 1980 film “The Blues Brothers” and its follow-up, “Blues Brothers 2000,” portraying “The Colonel” within the Blues Brothers band. In actual life, he toured with them.
He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 in New York City, and two years later obtained a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.
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