MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Steve Cropper, the lean, soulful guitarist, songwriter and record producer who anchored Booker T. and the M.G.’s at Stax Records and co-wrote classics including “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, said Cropper’s family told her he died on Wednesday in Nashville. The foundation runs the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis at the former Stax Records site, where Cropper worked for years.
A cause of death was not immediately known. Longtime associate Eddie Gore said he was with Cropper on Tuesday at a rehabilitation facility in Nashville, where Cropper had been after a recent fall. Gore said Cropper had been working on new music when he visited. “He’s such a good human,” Gore said. “We were blessed to have him, for sure.”
Cropper’s playing was never flashy; his spare, catchy licks and steady rhythm helped define Memphis soul. At a time when white musicians often profited from Black artists’ work, Cropper rarely sought the spotlight and collaborated across racial lines.
His name is called out in the 1967 Sam & Dave hit “Soul Man” — midway, singer Sam Moore shouts “Play it, Steve!” as Cropper delivers a tight, ringing riff. Cropper achieved that slide sound by using a Zippo lighter. He later reenacted the part with The Blues Brothers, appearing on their hit cover of “Soul Man.”
In a 2020 Associated Press interview, Cropper described his approach: “I listen to the other musicians and the singer. 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 called him “Perfect, man.” Guitarist Joe Bonamassa has said Cropper’s moves are widely copied: “If you haven’t heard the name Steve Cropper, you’ve heard him in song.”
Born near Dora, Missouri, Cropper moved with his family to Memphis at age 9 and got his first mail-order guitar at 14. Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed and Chet Atkins were early influences. He was a Stax artist before the label was even called Stax: Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton founded Satellite Records in 1957 and signed Cropper and his instrumental band the Royals Spades, later renamed the Mar-Keys, who had a hit with “Last Night.”
Some Mar-Keys became Stax’s horn section while Cropper and others formed Booker T. and the M.G.’s with keyboardist Booker T. Jones, bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn and drummer Al Jackson. The racially integrated band — Jones and Jackson Black, Dunn and Cropper white — scored instrumental hits such as “Green Onions,” “Hang ‘Em High” and “Time Is Tight,” and backed artists including Otis Redding and Sam & Dave. “When you walked in the door at Stax, there was absolutely no color,” Cropper said. “We were all there for the same reason — to get a hit record.”
In the mid-1960s, Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler brought Wilson Pickett to work with the Stax musicians. Cropper said he found Pickett’s gospel recordings and was struck by the line “I’ll see my Jesus in the midnight hour,” which he adapted slightly to help write the secular hit “In the Midnight Hour.” “The man up there has been forgiving me for this ever since!” Cropper joked.
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 to Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden. Al Jackson died in 1975 and Dunn in 2012. Rolling Stone 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.”
He was especially close to Otis Redding. Cropper recalled collaborating on “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay,” finished shortly before Redding’s death in a December 1967 plane crash; the song became a No. 1 hit in 1968. Cropper remembered adding final touches while still grieving Redding: “We had been looking for the crossover song. This song, we knew we had it.”
Cropper appeared in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers and its follow-up, Blues Brothers 2000, portraying “The Colonel” in the band and touring with them in real life. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 and received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 2007.
He continued recording into recent 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.