Booker T and the MG’s guitarist Steve Cropper dies

By:Adrian Sainz

Steve Cropper, the guitarist who helped anchor Booker T. and the MG’s at Stax Records and co-wrote the classics Green Onions and (Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay, has died aged 84.

Pat Mitchell Worley, president and CEO of the Soulsville Foundation, said Cropper’s family told her that Cropper died on Wednesday in Nashville.

A cause of death was not immediately known.

The guitarist, songwriter and record producer was not known for flashy playing, but his spare, catchy licks and solid rhythm chops helped define Memphis soul music.

Cropper’s name was immortalised in 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. The exchange was re-enacted in the late 1970s when Cropper joined the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act 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 gaps with an essential lick or two.

“I listen to the other musicians and the singer,” Cropper said.

“I’m not listening to just me. I make sure I’m sounding OK before we start the session. Once we’ve presented the song, then I listen to the song and the way they interpret it. And I play around all that stuff. That’s what I do. That’s my style.”

Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, asked once about Cropper, said simply, “Perfect, man.” On a YouTube instructional video, guitar virtuoso Joe Bonamassa says Cropper’s moves are often copied.

Cropper was a Stax artist before the label was even called Stax, which Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton had founded as Satellite Records in 1957. In the early 1960s, Satellite signed up Cropper and his instrumental band the Royals Spades. The band soon changed its name to the Mar-Keys and had a hit with the funky Last Night. Satellite soon was renamed Stax; a California label with the same name had threatened legal action.

At Stax, some of the Mar-Keys became the label’s horn section while Cropper and other Mar-Keys eventually formed Booker T. and the MG’s. Featuring Cropper, keyboard player Booker T. Jones, bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn and drummer Al Jackson, Booker T. and the MG’s were known for their hit instrumentals Green Onions, Hang ‘Em High and Time Is Tight, and backed Otis Redding, 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.

“When you walked in the door at Stax, there was absolutely no colour,” Cropper said in the AP interview. “We were all there for the same reason — to get a hit record.”

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 same year, Cropper, Dunn 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.

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.