INTERVIEW Steve Cropper 42 MAY 2017 guitar-bass.net Steve Cropper INTERVIEW HEART & SOUL He’s worked alongside musical legends such as Otis Redding and Booker T, was the house guitarist for Stax Records and played on a catalogue of hit records. G&B meets Steve Cropper Story Teri Saccone teve Cropper has enjoyed a career as Another thing I focus on is the intros: it’s not an almost impossibly accomplished just about creating music with a memorable musical polymath since the early melody, we made sure our songs had a loud 60s. A songwriter, producer, intro, too – important back in the days when S A&R man and guitarist, Cropper radio was king.” is often cited among the most influential Among Cropper’s guitar heroes were guitarists ever and is an acommplished soul “Lowman Pauling of the “5” Royales, Billy player. An in-the-pocket rhythm man, he Butler, Billy Doggett and Wayne Bennett, who attracts devotion from fellow guitarists for played with Bobby “Blue” Bland. Those guys his masterful slinky groove-based playing. incited my licks and set me on my path.” His vibrant songwriting legacy, including Cropper played alongside his high school Green Onions, (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of the Bay, friend and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn for Knock On Wood and In The Midnight Hour, decades, yet admits it was not Dunn that helped define the 60s soul era. ‘The Crop’ he formed the strongest musical partnership co-founded instrumental trailblazers Booker with, but instead the MGs’ keyboardist: T & The MGs and has collaborated with Otis “It was Booker. He is a musical genius. What Redding, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, Eddie the band did was to bring it down to basics Floyd, Aretha Franklin and many others. and make it feel simple, even if it wasn’t. Born in Missouri, Cropper’s family The line in Green Onions was in a ton of moved to Memphis when he was nine. blues songs because you can’t copyright He was already besotted with the guitar. Back a blues line. Yet people still find that tune then, youngsters learnt to play by listening to captivating today.” “Booker was a musical genius. What the band did was to bring it down to basics and make it feel simple, even if it wasn’t” records; Cropper was a fast learner, and by the Cropper’s working relationship with time he reached high school had established Redding was fruitful and fun. “His The Mar-Keys. The rest is history. enthusiasm, energy level and input made us “It’s just instinct,” he explains when play stuff we never thought of playing, and asked how he knew which acts to direct his he influenced all these artists and made it so efforts towards. “I was like a fisherman who enjoyable.” Redding died tragically at the age just knew where to fish.” He summarises of 26, and Cropper’s sense of loss remains his musical legacy almost nonchalantly: “It palpable: “He was instantly the best soul entices people to have a good time, maybe singer we heard, me and Duck Dunn, the very get up and dance.” Cropper’s primary day he opened his mouth to sing for us.” inspiration? “The singers I played behind Cropper had little time to mourn, as he were my main focus and inspiration.” immediately returned to Stax to complete A ‘feel’ player, ‘Crop’ does not extol much in (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay within a the way of technical advice. “My only real tip few days, adding his electric guitar to their pertaining to guitar is songwriting: just follow composition. “I put my mind in another the dots on the neck to help you write place and just did it. Then I kind of collapsed. a song. It doesn’t get simpler than that. Some Although we wrote together for years, I never of the biggest songs ever written were done knew we were the same age until his plane by that method, and I used it on Soul Man. crashed. He’d fly in from Georgia and I’d > guitar-bass.net MAY 2017 43 INTERVIEW Steve Cropper meet him at the Holiday Inn, and we’d write Midnight Hour riff backwards, and came up “We had a hit movie, but that was the sometimes all night long. He’d have tons with the riff for Knock… via that. And it turned only song from the film that hit big. That of ideas and we’d go through them. His out to be a neat little song.” was because the media gave them hell by audiences were his best friends and he treated When Stax fell apart in the 1970s, and soul insisting they were actors and not musicians. them that way.” gave way to funk and disco, Cropper relocated Wrong! Belushi played drums and sang in It was while playing with Redding that to LA for several years – where he worked a rock band since age 16, and Ackroyd is a Cropper pioneered his use of open-E tuning. with Elton John, Neil Young, Bob Dylan and phenomenal harmonica player.” “I think a lot of the licks I played behind Ringo Starr, among others before moving to Now 75, Cropper has seen the passing of Otis Redding in open-E tuning were fairly Nashville, where he remains today. countless friends and colleagues. “It’s a little original,” he says. Although he has played lead on dozens weird,” he says. “But when you live as long as Michael Jackson said of songwriting that of tracks, Cropper prefers rhythm. “Lead is me you lose a lot of friends and family, so you you “Gotta let God in the room”, and Cropper boring, but groove is not boring to me. gotta keep moving. I think if the good man up concurs: “I’ve Got Dreams To Remember has I can play that groove for two hours and never there has kept me around this long, it must a very emotional guitar be for something. I was part,” he explains about with Eddie Floyd last another Redding/ “Lead is boring, but groove is not boring to year in Monte Carlo. Cropper classic. “With I told him, ‘I guess you songs like that, there’s me. I can play a groove for two hours, never and me were always bad another force that comes miss a lick, and stay in the same tempo” because only the good into the room when die young’.” you’re writing, and this As a producer, mysteriously comes through Cropper onstage with Cropper knew how to extract the Otis Redding at you. I had people in the Hunter College in best out of artists. “I don’t have business who couldn’t believe New York in 1967 any tricks really,” he admits. “Once I don’t take drugs – they’d say, they have confidence in their ‘You’re a songwriter and you producer, it’s easier to get the best don’t smoke grass?’. I’d say, performance out of them. If they ‘I don’t like grass and it don’t like you they’re not gonna doesn’t like me’. say it, but them liking you makes “Every song that’s credited it much easier. If you gain their Redding/Cropper is a song trust, you can pull great music about him, despite him not from them. Once I get the best writing about himself. He performance then it’s on to the was who I always had in mind next project.” when we collaborated. I Can’t After our interview, Cropper Turn You Loose was heavily heads for the Smithsonian groove. He wouldn’t always Institute in Washington DC, remember the lyrics on where he’s endowing some of his that live, but he made it landmark gear for posterity. The work anyway.” list includes a 1961 Fender Esquire Cropper writes not only ‘Doc’, which was played on (Sittin’ intros and riffs, but also On) The Dock Of the Bay, a lyrics and bridges, and has ’75 Telecaster used in The Blues arranged hundreds of songs. Brothers and the album Briefcase He co-wrote the classic In The Full Of Blues, as well as two Levon Midnight Hour, remarkable Helm albums; a 1951–52 Telecaster for its gospel-tinged R&B and and the Fender Harvard amp he opening riff. “I came up with played on Green Onions. Cropper an intro for Wilson Pickett, says it’s something he feels and it’s so identifiable that “honoured to be a part of”. a few notes in people know Cropper continues touring, and exactly what song it is. Thing when off the road works in the is, everything we did at Stax historic RCA building in Nashville: was really all about licks. We called them miss a lick, and stay in the same tempo. A lot “It was built for Elvis in 1964. We’re in the ‘money licks’.” of guys play four bars of rhythm guitar and room where he cut a lot of tracks.” Cropper’s collaboration with Eddie Floyd they’re bored to death and have to play notes We wonder what he makes of today’s was similar to his alliance with Redding: all over the place.” popular music: “It doesn’t make people want “With Eddie, I wrote songs the same way as The Blues Brothers, the 1980 film starring to dance or do much of anything,” he posits. I did with Otis; we’d come together with ideas John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, was a “To me, much of it is a bit like the selfie: and then work out a song.