March 2026
When I was 12, I formed a band with a couple of friends who, like me, had been playing music for a year or so. We played songs that had been on the radio over the previous few years, songs every kid just starting a band in 1968 would play. “Gloria,” by the Shadows of Knight—we hadn’t heard Them’s original version. “In the Midnight Hour,” by Wilson Pickett.
Some of the songs we learned, like Creedence’s “Proud Mary,” had simple chord progressions, which we simplified even further. Well, “Gloria” couldn’t be much simpler. Parts of the songs, though, were more advanced than I realized at the time. I didn’t get the solos right on either. They required more skill than I possessed.
Another song we played was “Soul Man,” the great Sam & Dave single from a year earlier. It’s possible I got the intro, a series of intervals played up the neck. I doubt I played it right, and I’m sure I didn’t get the rhythm-guitar part either. I also know I didn’t nail the two-note lead-guitar figure that appears twice during the choruses of the song. It’s such deep blues and so emotionally stirring that the second time through, Sam Moore yells out, “Play it, Steve!”
Moore’s outburst was directed toward guitarist Steve Cropper, who died in December last year at age 84. When I played that two-note solo in 1968, I placed my index finger on the 13th fret of the high E string, then played the G, two steps up, with my ring finger. I realized later that Cropper was just bending the string from the F to the G. I can do that now, but the solo still doesn’t sound the way it did when Cropper played it.
Cropper was not a guitar hero, at least not in the way most of us who grew up in the late 1960s and into the ’70s thought of that title. “I’m a rhythm man,” he told Terry Gross in 1990, when she interviewed him on her NPR show Fresh Air. In the days following the news of his death, I played a lot of records that feature Cropper—especially his appearances with Booker T. & the M.G.’s. He was an ace rhythm player, no question, but his brief, incisive solos leave a stronger impression than any number of flashier outings by many of his contemporaries.
Stephen Lee Cropper was born in Dora, Missouri, on October 21, 1941. When he was nine, his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. Various bios I’ve read say that was where he first heard African American gospel music, which was a formative experience for him. Memphis was one of several major music centers in the South, so Cropper would have also heard country music, R&B, jazz, and much more on local radio stations.
Cropper got his first guitar when he was 14, and taught himself to play by copying what he heard on the radio and on records. He has named Tal Farlow, Chuck Berry, and Jimmy Reed as influences, but the guitarist who left the biggest impression on him was Lowman Pauling, the guitarist and primary songwriter for the influential R&B group, The “5” Royales. Pauling’s example of sincerely felt but restrained, economical playing was a model for Cropper’s own approach to guitar.
Cropper was still in high school in 1958 when he formed a group with some friends. The Royal Spades played gigs around the Memphis area, and Cropper played on sessions for Sun Records and Hi Records over the next couple of years. The sax player for the Royal Spades was Charles “Packy” Axton, whose mom and uncle were co-owners of Satellite Records in Memphis.
Estelle Axton wasn’t interested in her son’s band until they put together a track called “Last Night.” Estelle suggested changing the band’s name to the Mar-Keys, and Satellite released the tune as a single in June 1961. It became a national hit and established the label, which would soon be renamed as Stax Records.
Cropper played a second keyboard on “Last Night,” but his professionalism and guitar skills impressed Jim Stewart, Satellite’s co-owner. Stewart started booking Cropper for recording sessions with three other musicians: Booker T. Jones played keyboards, Al Jackson Jr. was the drummer, and Lewie Steinberg played bass. Together, they would form the core of the Stax house band.
In June 1962, the quartet was jamming in the studio on a tune Jones had written after a session they had been booked for had been canceled. Stewart liked what he heard and recorded it as a single. He told the group it needed a B-side and Jones started playing a blues riff. The rest of the group fell in behind him.
Stewart wanted to release the first recording, “Behave Yourself,” as the A-side of the single. The B-side emphasized the blues, and it was eminently danceable. “Lewie called this doodling jam ‘Funky Onions,’” Jones told The Guardian in 2019. “But Jim’s sister said: ‘We can’t use that word.’ To laced-up, deep-South conservative America, it sounded like a cuss word. So we retitled it ‘Green Onions.’”
“Green Onions” had all the elements that would make the group such a key part of Southern soul in the ’60s. Jackson and Steinberg swung mightily and established a strong groove. Jones played a churchy, blues-inflected organ that owed something to Jimmy Smith, and Cropper’s rhythm guitar was clean and uncluttered, and it cut through with force. His solo was brief, greasy, and razor-sharp.
Cropper knew Scotty Moore, Elvis’s guitarist, who was production manager at Sun Records. He asked Moore to cut an acetate of the recording the quartet had just recorded. Cropper took it to a local DJ, Reuben Washington, and asked him to listen to the B-side, which Cropper thought was the more likely hit. Washington liked it and immediately played it on the air. The station was flooded with calls about the tune.
Satellite released “Green Onions” as the A-side, and it became a nationwide hit. “That band . . . was a once-in-a-lifetime unit,” Jones told The Guardian. “We clicked because of our devotion to simplicity.” The group needed a name, and “Green Onions” was credited to Booker T. & the M.G.’s. Chips Moman, a producer for Satellite at the time, claimed the name was inspired by his MG sports car. Stax said it stood for “Memphis Group.”
An album followed a few months later. Green Onions was released on the Stax Records label. It would be a while until Booker T. & the M.G.’s hit the top-40 pop charts again, but they did well in R&B. Donald “Duck” Dunn replaced Steinberg on bass in 1965, and that lineup remained together until 1971, enjoying consistent success on the R&B charts and placing several hits on the pop charts.
Booker T. & the M.G.’s played on many of the albums and singles that Stax and its subsidiary, Volt Records, released throughout the ’60s. The group appeared on records by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, Johnny Taylor, and the Staple Singers, among many others. Most of those recordings also featured a horn section, and other musicians, especially Isaac Hayes, helped out, but the core band was the M.G.’s.
The band’s own songs were collaborations, but Jones and Cropper each had a hand in some of the biggest hits that Stax/Volt released. Cropper often worked with singers, and he got a cowriting credit with Eddie Floyd for “Knock on Wood,” with Wilson Pickett for “In the Midnight Hour,” and with Otis Redding for “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” He and Redding wrote “Mr. Pitiful.” Pickett had a hit with “634‑5789,” a Cropper/Floyd tune.
Two songs that Cropper wrote with Don Covay, “See‑Saw” and “Sookie Sookie,” were minor hits for Covay, but were covered by others and became part of the Stax legacy. Cropper collaborated on a few songs by Isaac Hayes and David Porter, who would become a powerhouse writing team at Stax. By the mid-1960s, Cropper was the A&R director for Stax, seeking out and signing talent for the label.
Cropper’s guitar was the key part of the arrangements he helped develop, but never the dominant instrument. Horns open “In the Midnight Hour,” and Cropper’s distinctive rhythm guitar keeps it moving. He hits the low note in each chord firmly and then strikes the three high strings with a sharp upward sweep of the pick. Cropper plays a portion of the intro on the low notes at two points during the song, but the horn section gets the feature during the break.
The horn section dominates “Knock on Wood,” but Cropper’s rhythm guitar again pulls the song together. He alternates sliding, bright chords and note bends with solid, chugging rhythm lines that emphasize the song’s dance-friendly beat. In a Stax arrangement, Cropper’s guitar is just one of many elements that lock together to support and bring attention to the singer.
Cropper got a shot at a solo recording for Stax in 1969. He produced and arranged With a Little Help from My Friends. The all-instrumental album doesn’t list any of the musicians who appear, but they probably include the M.G.’s and the Memphis Horns. On this selection of blues, R&B, and rock tunes, Cropper’s playing is a model of taste, tone, and soul—even when he stretches out.
The M.G.’s disbanded when Stax changed direction in 1971, edging toward a more urban sound. Al Jackson Jr. did some sessions for the label, but also played on recordings for Hi Records with singer Al Green. Jackson cowrote some of Green’s hits, including “Let’s Stay Together” and “I’m Still in Love with You.” He died in 1975 when an intruder shot him during a robbery. Duck Dunn also continued to work at Stax, off and on, but played on recordings by many artists at other studios, including Bob Dylan, Jimmy Buffett, and Tom Petty. He died in 2012 while on tour with Cropper in Japan.
Booker T. Jones moved to California and continued to play on many recording sessions. He also went into record production, helming LPs by Bill Withers, Rita Coolidge, and Willie Nelson. Cropper followed a similar path. He established a recording studio in Memphis and produced recordings by Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, Ringo Starr, and John Prine, among others.
Cropper played with Jones and Dunn in Levon Helms’s RCO All-Stars Band in 1977, and a year later, he and Dunn were among the musicians who backed Dan Akroyd and John Belushi in a Blues Brothers sketch on Saturday Night Live. In 1980, the same musicians appeared in The Blues Brothers, the film developed around the characters Akroyd and Belushi had created. Cropper and the other players backed the soul and R&B performers who were featured in the film.
Over the years, Cropper continued to appear on recordings. In 2008, he collaborated on an LP with Felix Cavaliere, the legendary singer and organist for the Rascals. The pair returned with a second album, two years later. In 2011, Cropper released Dedicated: A Salute to The 5 Royales, which paid tribute to the group’s guitarist, Lowman Pauling. Cropper’s last two albums, Fire It Up (2021) and Friendlytown (2024), were vibrant—they showed him to be in firm command of his guitar playing, even after more than 60 years.
Musicians and attentive music lovers know about Steve Cropper, but he didn’t have the name recognition of guitarists like Eric Clapton or Eddie Van Halen. Cropper was a team player who never really called attention to himself. However, he had a hand in many of the songs that define Stax Records and the music of the ’60s, and no one who hears the solo on “Green Onions” will forget it or doubt the power of Cropper’s guitar playing.
. . . Joseph Taylor
josepht@soundstagenetwork.com
