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 anchor the celebrated Memphis backing band Booker T. and the M.G.’s at 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 at the site of the former Stax Records, where Cropper worked for years.

A cause of death was not immediately known. Longtime associate Eddie Gore told The Associated Press he was with Cropper on Tuesday at a rehabilitation facility in Nashville, where Cropper had been after a recent fall. Cropper had been working on new music when Gore visited, he said.

“He’s such a good human,” Gore said. “We were blessed to have him, for sure.”

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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. At a time when it was common for White musicians to co-opt the work of Black artists and make money from their songs, Cropper was that rare White artist willing to keep a lower profile and collaborate.

Cropper was celebrated, respected by fellow guitarists

Cropper’s very name was immortalized in the 1967 smash “Soul Man,” recorded by Sam & Dave. Midway, singer Sam Moore calls out “Play it, Steve!” as Cropper pulls off a tight, ringing riff, a slide sound that Cropper used a Zippo lighter to create. The exchange was reenacted 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 AP, 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.

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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.

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

Cropper was born near Dora, Missouri, but moved with his family to Memphis when he was 9 and got his first mail-order guitar at age 14, according to his website, playitsteve.com. Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed and Chet Atkins were among his early influences.

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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 “Last Night.”

Satellite was later renamed Stax, where some of the Mar-Keys became the label’s horn section while Cropper and other Mar-Keys formed Booker T. and the M.G.’s.

Featuring Cropper, keyboard player Booker T. Jones, bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn and drummer Al Jackson, they were known for their hit instrumentals “Green Onions,” “Hang ‘Em High” and “Time Is Tight,” and backed Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and others.

Cropper co-wrote “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” weeks before Redding’s death

In a 2017 interview with “CBS Mornings,”Cropper recounted playing guitar behind Redding at the Monterey Pop Festival in a legendary 1967 performance that helped put Redding on the map.

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“We had no idea what the reaction was gonna be. And it was unbelievable,” Cropper told “CBS Mornings.”

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

“That afternoon, it was done,” Cropper told “CBS Mornings.” “We went and cut it the next day. I think there’s three takes of it.”

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

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“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 No. 1 record on the Billboard charts. It won Redding and Cropper the Grammy for Best R&B song, with Redding also winning Best Male R&B Vocal Performance.

Booker T. and the M.G.’s. broke barriers

Booker T. and the M.G.’s. was a racially integrated band, a rarity in its day.

It was so admired that even non-Stax artists recorded with them, notably Wilson Pickett. Jones, who is the only surviving member of the band, and Jackson are Black. Dunn and Cropper are white.

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

In the mid-1960s, Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler brought Pickett to work with the Stax musicians.

During a 2015 gathering with the National Music Publishers Association, Cropper acknowledged he had never heard of Pickett before working with him. He found some gospel recordings by Pickett, was taken by the line “I’ll see my Jesus in the midnight hour” and with a slight change helped write a secular standard.

“The man up there has been forgiving me for this ever since!” he said.

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Cropper was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 as a member of Booker T. and the M.G.’s.

That year, Cropper, Dunn and Jones played in an all-star tribute at Madison Square Garden to Bob Dylan. Al Jackson died in 1975, Dunn in 2012.

Rolling Stone magazine ranked Cropper 39th on its 100 Greatest Guitarists list, calling him “the secret ingredient in some of the greatest rock and soul songs.”

Cropper was in the 1980 movie “The Blues Brothers” and its follow-up, “Blues Brothers 2000,” portraying “The Colonel” in the Blues Brothers band. In real life, he toured with them.

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

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