The iconic guitarist Steve Cropper, guitarist of Booker T and the MGs, has died aged 84
Steve Cropper, the acclaimed guitarist with the seminal soul group Booker T & the MGs, has died at the age of 84.
The artist, who played on and helped pen the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, succumbed recently in the city of Nashville.
Considered among the best backing bands in soul music, the quartet the MGs was the house band of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax/Volt and is most famous for their classic 1962 track Green Onions.
Cropper went on to join the blues revival band The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and played on their hit cover of Soul Man.
"Steve was a deeply admired musician, songwriter, and producer whose profound talent impacted generations around the world," his family said in a release.
"While we grieve the loss of a family man and friend, we find comfort knowing that Steve will live forever through his music," they noted.
A cause of death was not disclosed.
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 wonderful human," Gore said. "We were lucky to have him, for sure."
A Storied Musical Path
Voted the second-best guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper began working at Stax in 1961 at the age of 20.
A year later, the MGs were founded, consisting of keyboardist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg - who was succeeded by Donald "Duck" Dunn in 1964.
The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.
"I've always thought of myself as a player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper said in a past interview. "I take pride in the fact that I can play something consistently, while other guitar players avoid that approach. They are reluctant to repeat the same riff twice."
Not only was he a guitarist, Cropper was a vastly creative songwriter, and alongside Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he collaborated on Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.
According to available information, he was "a part of virtually every record put out by Stax from 1961 through 1970".
"We would often spend long days in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists signed to the label, so we had a extremely demanding schedule."