Steve Cropper, guitarist and member of Stax Records’ Booker T and the M.G.’s, dies

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — 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 Data and co-wrote the classics “Inexperienced Onions,” “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” and “Within the Midnight Hour,” has died. He was 84.

Pat Mitchell Worley, president and CEO of the Soulsville Basis, stated Cropper’s household advised her that Cropper died on Wednesday in Nashville. The inspiration operates the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis, positioned on the website of the previous Stax Data, the place Cropper labored for years.

A explanation for demise was not instantly recognized. Longtime affiliate Eddie Gore stated he was with Cropper on Tuesday at a rehabilitation facility in Nashville, the place Cropper had been after a current fall. Cropper had been engaged on new music when Gore visited, he stated.

“He is such an excellent human,” Gore stated. “We had been blessed to have him, for certain.”

The guitarist, songwriter and file producer was not recognized for flashy enjoying, however his spare, catchy licks and strong rhythm chops helped outline Memphis soul music. At a time when it was frequent for white musicians to co-opt the work of Black artists and make more cash from their songs, Cropper was that uncommon white artist prepared to maintain a decrease profile and collaborate.

‘Play it, Steve!’

Cropper’s very identify was immortalized within the 1967 smash “Soul Man,” recorded by Sam & Dave. Halfway, singer Sam Moore calls out “Play it, Steve!” as Cropper pulls off a decent, 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.”

In a 2020 interview with The Related Press, Cropper mentioned his profession and the way he mastered the artwork of filling gaps with a necessary lick or two.

“I hearken to the opposite musicians and the singer,” Cropper stated. “I am not listening to simply me. I ensure that I am sounding OK earlier than we begin the session. As soon as we have offered the music, then I hearken to the music and the way in which they interpret it. And I mess around all that stuff. That is what I do. That is my type.”

Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, requested as soon as about Cropper, stated merely, “Good, man.” On a YouTube tutorial video, guitar virtuoso Joe Bonamassa says Cropper’s strikes are sometimes copied.

“If you have not heard the identify Steve Cropper, you have heard him in music,” Bonamassa stated.

He acquired his first guitar at 14

Cropper was born close to Dora, Missouri, however moved together with his household to Memphis when he was 9 and acquired his first mail-order guitar at age 14, in line with his web site, playitsteve.com. Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed and Chet Atkins had been amongst his early influences.

Cropper was a Stax artist earlier than the label was even known as Stax, which Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton had based as Satellite tv for pc Data in 1957. Within the early Nineteen Sixties, Satellite tv for pc 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 “Final Evening.”

Satellite tv for pc quickly was later renamed Stax, the place a number of the Mar-Keys turned the label’s horn part whereas Cropper and different Mar-Keys shaped Booker T. and the M.G.’s. That includes Cropper, keyboard participant Booker T. Jones, bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn and drummer Al Jackson, they had been recognized for his or her hit instrumentals “Inexperienced Onions,” “Grasp ‘Em Excessive” and “Time Is Tight,” and backed Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and others.

The racially built-in band, a rarity in its day, was so admired that even non-Stax artists recorded with them, notably Wilson Pickett. Jones, who’s the one surviving member of the band, and Jackson are Black. Dunn and Cropper are white.

“Whenever you walked within the door at Stax, there was completely no shade,” Cropper stated within the AP interview. “We had been all there for a similar cause — to get a success file.”

Impressed by gospel music

Within the mid-Nineteen Sixties, Atlantic Data government Jerry Wexler introduced Pickett to work with the Stax musicians. Throughout a 2015 gathering with the Nationwide Music Publishers Affiliation, 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 will see my Jesus within the midnight hour” and with a slight change helped write a secular normal.

“The person up there was forgiving me for this ever since!” he stated.

Cropper was inducted into the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame in 1992 as a member of Booker T. and the M.G.’s. That yr, Cropper, Dunn and Jones performed in an all-star tribute at Madison Sq. Backyard to Bob Dylan. Al Jackson died in 1975, Dunn in 2012.

Rolling Stone journal ranked Cropper thirty ninth on its 100 Best Guitarists listing, calling him “the key ingredient in a number of the biggest rock and soul songs.”

Cropper 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 bittersweet reflection on his triumphant look a couple of months earlier on the Monterey Pop Pageant. Cropper would bear in mind including the ultimate touches on the recording whereas nonetheless grieving for Redding.

“We had been searching for the crossover music,” he stated. “This music, 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 Corridor of Fame in 2005, and two years later acquired a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.

Cropper continued recording into his later years, together with 2024’s “Friendlytown,” which was nominated for a Grammy. Earlier this yr, Cropper acquired the Tennessee Governor’s Arts Award, the state’s highest honor within the arts.