Steve Cropper, acclaimed guitarist for Booker T. and the M.G.’s, dies at 84

Steve Cropper, the lean, soulful guitarist and songwriter who helped famed Memphis backing band Booker T. and the MG's 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.

Pat Mitchell Worley, president and CEO of the Soulsville Foundation, confirmed Cropper's death to CBS News. 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 many years.

The cause of death was not immediately known. Longtime partner Eddie Gore told The Associated Press that he was with Cropper on Tuesday at a rehabilitation center in Nashville, where Cropper was staying after a recent fall. Cropper was working on new music when Gore arrived, he said.

“He’s such a good person,” Gore said. “Of course, we were lucky to have him.”

“Steve was a beloved musician, songwriter and producer whose extraordinary talent touched the lives of millions of people around the world,” Cropper's family said in a statement released through the foundation, describing his “impact on American music is immeasurable.”

“Every note he played, every song he wrote, and every artist he inspired ensures that his spirit and artistry will continue to move people for generations to come,” the family wrote.

The guitarist, songwriter and producer was not known for his flashy playing, but his understated, catchy licks and crisp rhythm chips helped define Memphis soul music. At a time when white musicians routinely used the work of black artists and made more money from their songs, Cropper was the rare white artist who was willing to stay in the shadows and collaborate.

Cropper was celebrated and respected by his fellow guitarists.

Cropper's name was immortalized in the 1967 hit “Soul Man”, recorded by Sam and Dave. Halfway through the song, singer Sam Moore shouts, “Play it, Steve!” as Cropper performs a tight, jangly riff, a sliding sound that Cropper created using a Zippo lighter. The exchange was replicated in the late 1970s when Cropper joined John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd's band The Blues Brothers and played on their cover of “Soul Man.”

In a 2020 interview with the AP, Cropper talked about his career and how he mastered the art of filling in the blanks with an important phrase or two.

“I listen to other musicians and the singer,” Cropper said. “I listen not only to myself. Before I start a session, I make sure I'm okay. After we present the song, I listen to it and how they interpret it. And I play with all these things. That's what I do. This is my style.”

Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, when asked about Cropper once, simply replied, “Great, man.” In a YouTube instructional video, guitar virtuoso Joe Bonamassa says Cropper's moves are often copied.

“If you haven’t heard the name Steve Cropper, you’ve heard him in a song,” Bonamassa said.

Cropper was born near Dora, Missouri, but moved with his family to Memphis when he was 9 years old and received his first guitar in the mail at age 14, according to his website playitsteve.com. Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed and Chet Atkins were his 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 signed Cropper and his instrumental group the Royals Spades. Soon the group changed its name to Mar-Keys and released the hit “Last Night”.

Satellite was later renamed Stax, where some of the Mar-Keys became the label's horn section, and Cropper and other Mar-Keys formed Booker T. and the MG's. Consisting of 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 also supported Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and others.

Cropper co-wrote “(Sitting) on ​​the Bay Dock” a few weeks before Redding's death.

In an interview with CBS Mornings in 2017 Cropper recounted playing guitar with Redding at the Monterey Pop Festival in the legendary 1967 performance that helped catapult Redding to fame.

“We had no idea what the reaction would be. And it was incredible,” Cropper said on CBS Mornings.

In late November 1967, Cropper said Redding brought him a song that the now legendary singer began writing on a houseboat overlooking San Francisco Bay, which would become “(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay.”

“Everything was ready that day,” Cropper said on “CBS Mornings.” “The next day we went and installed it. I think there will be three takes.”

A few weeks later, on December 10, 1967, Redding died in a plane crash near Madison, Wisconsin, at the age of 26.

“And I said, 'I just lost my best friend,'” Cropper told CBS Mornings.

Cropper returned to the studio to put the finishing touches on the song, and “(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay,” released in January 1968, became the first posthumous record to reach number one on the Billboard charts. It earned Redding and Cropper a Grammy Award for Best R&B Song, and Redding also won the award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance.

Booker T. and MG. broke barriers

Booker T. and MG. was a racially integrated group, which was rare in its time. They were so admired that even non-Stax artists, notably Wilson Pickett, recorded with them. Jones, the only surviving member of the group, and Jackson are black. Dunn and Cropper are white.

“When you walked in the door at Stax, there was absolutely no color,” Cropper told the AP. “We were all there for the same reason – to get a hit.”

In the mid-1960s, Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler invited Pickett to work with Stax musicians. During a meeting with the National Music Publishers Association in 2015, Cropper admitted that he had never heard of Pickett before working with him. He found some of Pickett's gospel recordings, took the line “I'll see my Jesus in the midnight hour” and, with a slight modification, helped write a secular standard.

“Since then, this man upstairs has forgiven me for this!” – 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 same year, Cropper, Dunn and Jones played a star-studded tribute to Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden. Al Jackson died in 1975, Dunn 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 starred in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers and its sequel, The Blues Brothers 2000, playing “The Colonel” in the Blues Brothers band. In real life, he toured with them.

He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 and received a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement two years later.

Cropper continued to record in later years, including 2024's “Friendlytown,” which was nominated for a Grammy. Earlier this year, Cropper received the Tennessee Governor's Award for the Arts, the state's highest honor in the arts.

He is survived by his wife and four children.