Steve Cropper 1941 - 2025
The Soul Cartographer of McLemore Avenue...
If the sound that is Memphis Soul were a map, its cartographer would be Steve Cropper. The guitar voice of the Stax Record’s house bands, the Mar-Keys and Booker T. & The M.G.’s, chief invention was the densely packed soul-mentum he infused into songs he co-wrote, like Eddie Floyd’s “Knock On Wood,” Wilson Pickett’s “In The Midnight Hour,” Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” and that ground-zero of Southern Soul, BT&MG’s “Green Onions” Had this been all Cropper contributed, his legacy in Souther Soul would have been established.
During the decade of the 1960s, Cropper and Booker T. & The M.G.’s supported a myriad of artists that included Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Bill Withers, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Johnnie Taylor, and Albert King. Besides his guitar duties, Cropper served as the label’s A&R man and producer for many recordings for the Stax label. Independently, Cropper contributed to recordings by Alabama, William Bell, Big Star, the Cate Brothers, David Clayton Thomas, Delaney & Bonnie, Yvonne Elliman, Peter Frampton, Richie Furay, and a legion of other artists in the 1970s and beyond.
Cropper’s guitar style and tone were so pervasive during the period that songs like Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man” as well as Briefcase Full of Blues (Atlantic, 1978), and The Blues Brothers (Atlantic, 1980) could never have existed without him. Cropper had a close relationship with Otis Redding, on whose ATCO Records he appeared, also producing the posthumous The Dock of the Bay (ATCO, 1968), The Immortal Otis Redding (ATCO, 1968), Love Man (ATCO, 1969), and Tell the Truth (ATCO, 1970). The guitarist, with Booker T. & The M.G.’s supported Redding during his famous appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival on Saturday night, June 16, 1967, smack-dab in the middle of the Summer of Love’s inauguration. Redding was to perish in a plane crash six months later.
Losing Redding crushed Steve Cropper, who carried the torch for Redding until Wednesday, December 3, 2025, when Cropper died quietly while in a rehabilitation facility in Nashville, recovering from a recent fall.
Looks like nothing’s gonna change
Everything still remains the same
I can’t do what ten people tell me to do
So I guess I’ll remain the same…1
“(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” Steve Cropper and Otis Redding, Volt-ATCO Records, 1968.