Steve Cropper, guitarist and member of Stax Records' Booker T and the
M.G.'s, has died at age 84
[December 04, 2025]
By ADRIAN SAINZ
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — 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,
said Cropper’s family told her that Cropper died on Wednesday in
Nashville. 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 said 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.”
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 more money from
their songs, Cropper was that rare white artist willing to keep a lower
profile and collaborate.
‘Play it, Steve!’
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 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.
“If you haven’t heard the name Steve Cropper, you’ve heard him in song,”
Bonamassa said.
He got his first guitar at 14
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.
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 soon 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.
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Guitarist, songwriter and record producer Steve Cropper poses
Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark
Humphrey,File)
 The racially integrated band, a
rarity in its day, 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.
“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.”
Inspired by gospel song
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.
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 especially close to Redding. In an interview on his
website, Cropper recalled collaborating on “(Sittin' on) the Dock of
the Bay,” completed shortly before Redding’s death in a December
1967 plane crash and a No. 1 hit in 1968.
The brooding, folkish ballad was a bittersweet reflection on his
triumphant appearance a few months earlier at the Monterey Pop
Festival. Cropper would remember adding the final touches on the
recording while still grieving for Redding.
“We had been looking for the crossover song,” he said. “This song,
we knew we had it.”
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.
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.
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Associated Press National Writer Hillel Italie contributed reporting
from New York.
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