Picture: Leah Puttkammer/FilmMagic
Steve Cropper — who performed guitar for Booker T. & the MG’s, the Blues Brothers, and Otis Redding — has died. He was 84. His son Cameron confirmed the information to Selection. Cropper was a multi-instrumentalist, a songwriter, and the man John Belushi says “Play it, Steve” to on “Soul Man.”
Cropper was born in Dora, Missouri in 1941. His household moved to Memphis when he was 9, the place he first encountered Black church music. Cropper’s relationship with Stax Data started together with his first band. The group known as themselves the Mar-Keys after the marquee exterior the place that will change into Stax HQ. He joined Stax home band Booker T. & the MG’s in 1962. He co-wrote “Inexperienced Onions,” Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” and “Knock on Wooden.” Cropper left Stax in 1970 after what Selection known as “front-office conflicts.” The MG’s stored working, nevertheless, and backed artists like Bob Dylan, John Fogerty, and Neil Younger.
In 1978, Cropper performed on the Blues Brothers’ Briefcase Stuffed with Blues. Cropper seems within the 1980 eponymous movie. He’s recruited into the band alongside Murphy Dunne, and his band Murph and the Magic Tones. He seems in Blues Brothers 2000 — which, regardless of the title, got here out in 1998.
Cropper amassed numerous accolades in his lifetime. “Inexperienced Onions” topped the R&B chart, and went to quantity 3 on the Sizzling 100. Briefcase Stuffed with Blues went to number one on the album chart in 1978. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame with the MG’s in 1992. In 1996, Mojo named him the second greatest guitarist of all time, with solely Jimi Hendrix forward of him. The magazine praised his “metronome-crisp timing; deadly-accurate chops; earth-moving bottom-line riffs; sharp, nasty little licks and beauty notes. His solos by no means outstay their welcome or depart you wanting much less.”