Legendary guitarist Steve Cropper, member of Booker T and the MGs, has passed away aged 84
Steve Cropper, the acclaimed guitarist with the seminal soul group Booker T & the MGs, has left us at the age of 84.
The guitar virtuoso, who contributed to and collaborated on writing Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, died this past Wednesday in the city of Nashville.
Considered among the best studio bands in soul music, the quartet Booker T. Jones and the MGs was the core musical unit of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax/Volt and is most famous for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.
Cropper went on to join the comedy music group The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and performed on their hit cover of Soul Man.
"Steve was a deeply admired guitarist, composer, and producer whose extraordinary talent impacted generations around the world," his family expressed in a message.
"While we grieve the loss of a family man and friend, we find comfort knowing that Steve will be remembered through his music," they noted.
A cause of death was not immediately known.
A colleague, Eddie Gore, mentioned he was with Cropper on Tuesday in Nashville, where the guitarist was in the process of creating new songs.
"He's such a good human," Gore remarked. "We were fortunate to have him, for sure."
An Illustrious Journey
Voted the runner-up for guitarist of all time by a music periodical in 1996, Cropper began working at Stax in 1961 at the age of 20.
A year later, the MGs were founded, featuring organist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg - who was succeeded by Donald "Duck" Dunn in 1964.
The band was honored by inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.
"I've always thought of myself as a rhythm player," Cropper said in a past interview. "I get off on the fact that I can play something over and over, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They refuse to play the same phrase twice."
In addition to being a guitarist, Cropper was a productive songwriter, and besides Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he helped write Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.
According to his official biography, he was "integral to the majority of record issued by Stax from 1961 through the end of 1970".
"We would literally spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper noted in an interview. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists we worked with, so we had a pretty busy schedule."
