From Otis Redding to Booker T, Steve Cropper was a powerful and precise force who helped shape so many soul classics | spirit

STiff Cropper stood alongside music legends and toiled in the shadows of the studio, never a star. But his work with fellow musicians and singers at Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee made him one of the most innovative and influential musicians of the 1960s.

In fact, pretty much every rock icon of that legendary decade looked up to Cropper, who has died at the age of 84. The Beatles seriously considered recording at Stax, and the Stones covered the songs he played on and emulated his clear rhythm and guitar playing. As a working musician in 1964, Jimi Hendrix drove from Nashville to Memphis to meet Cropper (they talked about guitars and jamming), while Janis Joplin insisted that her new band play a Christmas concert at Stax so as to compete with Cropper and his bandmates. All over the world, garage bands played the songs he helped shape.

If it were just about playing guitar, Cropper would be revered. His insightful, delicious, and never ostentatious style marks him out—along with Loman Bolling (his major influence), Curtis Mayfield, and Bobby Womack—as someone who defined the sound of authentic R&B. But this skinny and somewhat eccentric young man also developed into a brilliant engineer, producer and co-writer of soul anthems. Cropper was not a solo songwriter (nor did he seriously try to be a solo artist), but he, along with great soul singers like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Eddie Floyd, helped give structure to the song ideas they had, ensuring they had intros, verses, and choruses that jumped out at the listener. Cropper never felt the need to act like a “guitar hero” – his playing was economical and complimentary rather than attention-grabbing: even when Sam Moore of Sam & Dave shouted “Play it, Steve!” On Soul Man, Cropper plays the part entirely, embellishing the song rather than showing off his virtuosity.

Cropper grew up in Memphis and formed his first band, The Royal Spades, while in high school. At the time, Memphis was highly segregated and his school was all white, yet he and his fellow band members loved R&B. Estelle, the band’s saxophonist and mother of Charles “Bucky” Axton, co-founded Satellite Records, a small independent record label, with her brother Jim Stewart. The Spades recorded a track called Last Night, and Estelle—a doting mother as well as an accomplished startup executive—convinced Jim that Satellite should release it (although she was wise enough to insist that the teens change the band’s name to the Mar-Keys).

Last Night was a huge hit in the US and helped create the label, which was forced to change its name to Stax after a legal complaint from another label, Satellite Records. Cropper didn’t enjoy touring – Bucky was already drinking too much and the band was partying too hard for his liking – so he asked for a job helping Jim in the studio.

He learned to engineer and produce recordings, along with session playing. He was Stewart’s most trusted – and well-paid – employee at Stax, and here he founded Booker T & the MGs with teenage organist Booker T. Jones, drummer Al Jackson Jr. and bassist Lewie Steinberg (both veterans of the Memphis club scene). In 1962, Stewart believed that the studio jam the quartet had worked on demonstrated his potential, and so Green Onions was released – probably the most influential musical record of the 1960s and a fashion club favorite to this day.

It was Cropper who recognized the potential of a young man from Macon, Georgia, who had arrived at Stax as a servant to guitarist Johnny Jenkins on an unsuccessful session. When Otis Redding used the final minutes of the session to demo two songs he had written, Cropper played the piano behind him on “These Arms of Mine” and a legend was born. The two young men would work together for the rest of Redding’s short life – Booker T & MG provided the perfect backing for Redding in his famous performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and Stax’s subsequent European tour – exchanging ideas, licks and song titles, helping to shape the impressive body of work Redding left behind. It was Cropper who turned brief memories from Reading, about watching boats coming in and out of the bay, into a completed set of lyrics and one of Reading’s greatest songs.

Redding died in 1967, and Booker T departed for California, angry that Stewart had given Cropper a more favorable contract (racial tensions were rising at Stax in the late 1960s). Cropper slid into a sideman role: after he left Stax he played on sessions for John Lennon, Rod Stewart and other famous names. Then he became part of the band (and movie) the Blues Brothers, which certainly paid well even if they turned great R&B anthems into a bunch of comedic comedy. It doesn’t matter: Steve Cropper helped shape an entire genre. Rest in peace man of soul.