Steve Cropper, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame guitarist who helped form the “Memphis soul” sound on Stax Records recordings by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Booker T & the M.G.’s, died on Wednesday. He was 84.
Pat Mitchell Worley, president and CEO of the Soulsville Foundation that operates the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis, confirmed the musician’s death to Rolling Stone. A cause of death was not immediately available.
“Steve Cropper’s offerings to American music are significant but his contribution to soul and R&B music are immeasurable,” Mitchell Worley said in a statement. “As a founding member of Booker T. & the M.G.’s and a cornerstone of the Stax Records sound, his songwriting and guitar work shaped the very language of soul music. A gifted songwriter, producer, and musician, Cropper helped create timeless hits that continue to influence artists and people worldwide. His signature style helped define an era and cemented his legacy as one of the most important guitarists in modern music history.”
As the founding guitarist in Stax’s house band during the Memphis label’s hit-making prime, Cropper played on classics like Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man,” Booker T. & The M.G.’s “Green Onions,” Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour,” and Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” with Cropper also serving as co-writer on the latter three hits.
“Cropper has been the secret ingredient in some of the greatest rock and soul songs,” Rolling Stone wrote when placing Cropper at Number 45 on the list of the 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.
“His spare, soulful playing has appeared on records by dozens of rock and R&B artists, including a stint in the Blues Brothers’ band. Think of the introduction to Sam and Dave’s ‘Soul Man,’ the explosive bent notes in Booker T.’s ‘Green Onions,’ or the filigreed guitar fills in Redding’s ‘(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay’ — they all bear Cropper’s signature sound, the quintessence of soul guitar.”
“I don’t care about being center stage,” Cropper once said. “I’m a band member, always been a band member.”
For “Dock of the Bay,” ranked Number 26 on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, Cropper contributed the track’s guitar chords and rhythm to Redding’s lyrics about his experience on a Sausalito houseboat.
“Me being a purist kind of guy I said, ‘Otis, did you ever think that if a ship rolls it’s going to take on water and sink,’” Cropper recalled to Rolling Stone in 2017, “and he said about the lyric, ‘Hell, Crop, that’s what I want,’ and Otis always got his way.”
However, the platinum-selling Number One song wasn’t released until December 1967, a month after Redding’s death in a small plane crash. Cropper finished work on the song in the immediate aftermath of Redding’s death.
“One of the hardest things I ever had to do was mix that song,” Cropper told Rolling Stone. “I stayed up 24 hours mixing the song. The next morning I went out to the airport, went out on the tarmac and a stewardess came down to the bottom of the steps and I handed her that master.”
The Missouri-born Cropper moved to Memphis as a child, with the Tennessee city exposing him to gospel music. As a teenaged guitarist, Cropper co-founded the band the Mar-Keys, with that group recording the classic instrumental “Last Night” for the local Stax label in 1961, one of the first tracks released by the label after it changed its name from Satellite Records to Stax.
The Mar-Keys soon became the in-house band for Stax; in addition to backing the artists that recorded at Stax’s studio, members of the Mar-Keys themselves were rebranded as Booker T. & The M.G.’s (fronted by Mar-Keys keyboardist Booker T. Jones) for their own releases.
Following his legendary, nearly decade-long stint at Stax, Cropper moved to Los Angeles and became a go-to session musician, playing on tracks by artists like John Lennon (1975’s Rock ’n’ Roll), Ringo Starr, Leon Russell, Rod Stewart and, notably, the Blues Brothers, with Cropper also appearing in the 1980 comedy about the Saturday Night Live sketch (and revisited his work on Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man”). He also produced albums by the Jeff Beck Group, John Prine, Poco, and John Mellencamp (including his early hits “AIn’t Even Done with the Night” and “This Time”). Cropper and the MGs also backed Neil Young on his 2002 album Are You Passionate? and toured briefly with Young.
Cropper was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 as a member of Booker T. & The M.G.’s. A two-time Grammy Award winner, Cropper also received the Grammys’ lifetime achievement award in 2007.
