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 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 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 cause of death was not immediately known. Eddie Gore, his longtime teammate, said he was with Cropper on Tuesday at a rehabilitation facility in Nashville, where Cropper was after a recent fall. He said Cropper was working on new music when Gore visited.
“He’s a good human being,” Gore said. “We were lucky to have him, for sure.”
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. 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 stay out of the limelight and collaborate.
“Play it, Steve!”
Cropper’s name itself was immortalized in the song “Soul Man,” which Sam recorded in 1967. & dev. Halfway through, singer Sam Moore calls out “Play it, Steve!” As Cropper pulls out a tight chime, a sliding sound that Cropper used a Zippo lighter to create. The exchange was reactivated 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.”
In a 2020 interview with The Associated Press, Cropper discussed his career and how he mastered the art of filling in gaps with a key lick or two.
“I listen to other musicians and the singer,” Cropper said. “I don’t just listen to me. I make sure I sound good before we start the session. Once we introduce the song, I listen to the song and the way they interpret it. I play around with all that stuff. That’s what I do. That’s my style.”
When Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards was once asked about Cropper, he simply said: “Excellent, man.” In a YouTube instructional video, guitarist Joe Bonamassa says Cropper’s moves are often copied.
“If you haven’t heard the name Steve Cropper, you’ve heard it in the song,” Bonamassa said.
He got his first guitar at the age of fourteen
Cropper was born near Dora, Missouri, but moved with his family to Memphis when he was 9 and got his first guitar in the mail at 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 song “Last Night”.
The Satellite was soon later renamed Stax, with some Mar-Keys becoming the horn section of the brand while Cropper and other Mar-Keys formed Booker T. and MG’s. Featuring Cropper, keyboardist Booker T. Jones, bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn and drummer Al Jackson, they were known for their instrumental hits “Green Onions,” “Hang ‘Em High” and “Time Is Tight,” and backed Otis Redding and Sam. & Dave et al.
The racially integrated band, a rarity in its day, was so admired that even non-Stax artists recorded with them, notably Wilson Pickett. Jones, the only surviving member of the band, and Jackson are black. Dan and Cropper are white.
“When I walked in the door at Stax, there was no color at all,” Cropper said in an interview with the Associated Press. “We were all there for the same reason, which was to get a record out.”
Inspired by the gospel song
In the mid-1960s, Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler brought Pickett in 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 year, Cropper, Dunne and Jones played an all-star tribute concert at Madison Square Garden for Bob Dylan. The Jacksons died in 1975, and Dunn died 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 particularly close to Reading. 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 soulful ballad was a bittersweet reflection of 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, and two years later received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.
Cropper continued to record in his later years, including 2024’s “Friendlytown,” which was nominated for a Grammy Award. Earlier this year, Cropper received the Tennessee Governor’s Arts Award, the state’s highest honor in the arts.
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Associated Press national writer Hillel Italy contributed reporting from New York.
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