DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. Steve Cropper, the guitarist whose influential work for Stax Records in Memphis helped define soul music in the 1960s and '70s died Wednesday in Nashville. He was 84 years old. Today, we listen back to an archive interview with Cropper.
As a member of Booker T. & the M.G.'s, the in-house rhythm section at Stax, Cropper played guitar on some of the greatest soul hits of the '60s, records by Carla and Rufus Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave and Otis Redding.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'VE BEEN LOVING YOU TOO LONG")
OTIS REDDING: (Singing) I've been loving you too long to stop now. You were tired, and you want to be free. My love is growing stronger as you become a habit to me. Oh, I've been loving you a little too long. I don't want to stop now.
BIANCULLI: Otis Redding, recorded in 1965. Steve Cropper wasn't just a guitarist at Stax Records. He also was a producer and a songwriter. The No. 1 R&B hits he helped write included Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay," Eddie Floyd's "Knock On Wood" and Wilson Pickett's "In The Midnight Hour." Steve Cropper was 14 when he bought his first guitar and developed his style by listening to both country and rhythm and blues guitarists. In 1962, when Cropper was doing an instrumental jam at Stax Records with organist Booker T. Jones and his band, the engineer hit record. The resulting record, "Green Onions," was a major hit.
Steve Cropper appeared in the 1980 movie "The Blues Brothers," playing guitar and playing himself as Steve "The Colonel" Cropper. In 1992, Booker T. & the M.G.'s were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Two years before that, Steve Cropper spoke with Terry Gross. She asked him if the music in Memphis played a big part in his life when he was growing up there.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
STEVE CROPPER: I grew up kind of on the "Grand Ole Opry" and the kind of "Louisiana Hayride" kind of stuff.
TERRY GROSS: You know, what's really interesting about that is that you ended up playing mostly with Black singers and playing in integrated bands.
CROPPER: Right.
GROSS: How did you get exposed to Black music after being used to "Grand Ole Opry" stuff?
CROPPER: Well, that was really the thing. When I got a chance to have my own radio and start turning the knobs, I found one night this - on WDIA - Black spiritual music. I'd never heard it before, and it just blew me away, the feeling, the excitement of it,and that sort of thing. I grew up in the Church of Christ, which is, in those days, basically a capella singing. And I was very used to religious music, and I liked it. But here was a new twist on it. It had a beat. It was, you know, what we call funky now. And that was really, I think, the turning point in my interest in music. There was a music there that I really couldn't get enough of, and I just loved it.
GROSS: When you started playing guitar, did you have a sense of where you could fit in musically into the kind of music that you liked most?
CROPPER: Well, I think so - definitely with spiritual, because it was a rhythm thing. It wasn't so much lead and all of that. I really wasn't all that interested in intricate kind of music from a classical standpoint or from a country fiddle and that sort of thing. I like listening to it, but I didn't have any desire to get an instrument and try to copy that. I never really was a lead player. I never tried to be a lead player. I've been lucky enough to have played a few solos on some great artists' records. But really, I'm a rhythm man, and my best forte, I think, is capturing the feel of a song during its inception in the studio. That - I think that's where I'm best. Even though people fly me in all over to play on their records and overdub, I think they would be better using me on the ground floor, you know, as a building block rather than as a cherry on the cake.
GROSS: You had your first hit with a band called the Mar-Keys. And it wasn't long after that that you became affiliated with Stax Records. And you became the guitarist in the house rhythm section. You became a producer. You became a songwriter...
CROPPER: Floor sweeper.
GROSS: ...With Stax. Yeah, right.
(LAUGHTER)
CROPPER: Tape copier, an editor. Yeah.
GROSS: How did you get affiliated with Stax?
CROPPER: Well, it started - Charles Axton, the tenor player - and the funny story about Charles Axton...
GROSS: He was the tenor player with the Mar-Keys?
CROPPER: He was a tenor player with the Mar-Keys. He was on the record "Last Night" and everything. He came to me, and he said, I hear you guys got a pretty good band. He said, you know, I play saxophone. I'd like to be in your band. And I said, well, I'm not really interested. I don't think we're interested in adding horns to the group. And I said, how long have you been playing, you know? And he said, oh, I've been taking lessons for three months. And I'm going, Oh, yeah, great, you know? And somewhere in the conversation, he goes, Oh, by the way, my mother owns a recording studio. And I said, can you show up for rehearsal on Saturday?
(LAUGHTER)
CROPPER: And that is a true story now. I may stretch it a little bit, but that's the actual truth. And we went out. His uncle, Jim Stewart, the owner of Stax Records, had a little studio in his garage in Memphis, and we went out there and jammed around, and then they moved from his garage to a little place out in Brunswick, Tennessee, where they had the Satellite label. And we would go out there every weekend and play and all that. And, of course, Jim Stewart said we never had a chance, we'd never make it. But I think he just was being devil's advocate to just to see if he could push us into something. And we kept trying. We cut a bunch of instrumentals, some crazy little things that never saw the light of day. And until the time that we came up, with "Last Night."
But what happened was, Estelle, I don't know - Estelle Axton - I don't know if she saw any talent there or what she saw, but she liked me enough to keep me around. And she put me to work in her record shop, and I sold records. That's what I did. And I kept working - on the weekends, I would kind of do a little A&Ring 'cause people were always coming in. And on Saturdays, I would hold auditions 'cause people were always bringing in songs and all that. And that's sort of how I got started, you know, in the A&R thing. And finally, Jim said, wait a minute. He said, you know, Steve's spending more time in the studio than he is in the record shop and whatever. And so they got together and decided that I would be - start getting my salary from the record company rather than the record shop. And I started working, I guess, A&R full time at that point.
GROSS: Well, you, with the group Booker T. & the M.G.'s, had the hit of "Green Onions," and I think this was a big hit, and it helped out Stax Records a lot. how did the four of you - Booker T., Al Jackson, Donald "Duck" Dunn and yourself - get to play together and become the house rhythm section?
CROPPER: Well, what it all stemmed from basically was there we were with all this great success, doing "The Dick Clark Show" and everything as the Mar-Keys and we had this big hit record last night, and it was a lot of fun. And then all of a sudden, it wasn't fun anymore. It became work and what you call a road burden and that sort of thing, and seven of us or eight of us traveling in one car and trying to make all these shows. And I found out that I wasn't too happy with the road. And so what I really wanted to do was get back in the studio. I mean, I'd already knew that that's what I wanted to do.
Anyway, that's what I did. I came back to Memphis. I went to work in the studio again. I helped put together the rhythm section. I found out - I'd been playing with another band called the Club Handy Band, and we had done some sessions for Don Robey. I think - I don't I don't even remember which songs, but I played on the five Blind Boys albums. I played on Al "TNT" Braggs'. I think there was some Bobby "Blue" Bland stuff that I played on. But I played with a lot of those musicians, and we were asking around to find out who was a real good keyboard player. We had used several. And they said, there's this kid - he's still in school - named Booker T. Jones, and he's incredible. And they had worked with him on a lot of other stuff and on stage as well. So we got Booker over on a session, and everybody just fell in love with him.
GROSS: Let me let me play some of "Green Onions."
CROPPER: OK.
GROSS: And because we're only going to play an excerpt, I'm going to start this a little in because I want to get to your guitar solo in it (laughter).
CROPPER: (Laughter).
GROSS: So this is "Green Onions," Booker T. & the M.G.'s.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOOKER T. & THE M.G.'S SONG, "GREEN ONIONS")
BIANCULLI: That's "Green Onions," a hit by Booker T. & the M.G.'s, with Steve Cropper on guitar. We'll hear more of his 1990 interview with Terry Gross after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1990 interview with Steve Cropper, the influential guitarist, producer and songwriter who generated many hits for the Memphis label Stax Records in the 1960s and '70s. Steve Cropper died Wednesday at age 84.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: You co-wrote "Dock Of The Bay" with Otis Redding, and you produced the record as well, right?
CROPPER: Right. Correct.
GROSS: What was your collaboration with him like when it came to writing songs?
CROPPER: Well, of course, we wrote a lot of songs together. The inception of "Dock Of The Bay" was really no different than any other one. Otis was one of those kind of guys who had a hundred ideas, and he always had with him, anytime he came in to record, 10 or 15 different pretty good ideas, either intros or titles or whatever. And he had been in San Francisco doing the Fillmore. And the story that I got, he had rented a boathouse or stayed out at a boathouse or something. That's when he got the idea of watching the ships come in the bay there. And that's about all he had - I watched the ships come in, watch them roll way again, sitting on the dock of the bay. And I just took that. We just sat down, and I just kind of learned the changes that he was kind of running over. And I finished the lyrics. And if you listen to songs that I collaborated with with Otis, most of the lyrics are about him. Well, he never really - he might say the Big O in a song or something like that, but Otis didn't really write about himself, but I did. Songs like "Mr. Pitiful, " "Sad Song Fa-Fa (ph)," They were all about Otis and Otis' life. And "Dock Of The Bay" is exactly that. I left my home in Georgia, headed for the 'Frisco Bay. It was all about him going out to San Francisco to perform.
And that's kind of the way I wrote with Otis. I wrote the bridge and stuff like that. And that's the way we collaborated. He trusted me. You know, I always seemed to do the things that he liked, you know, worked on songs that came out the way he wanted them. And I also worked on a lot of songs with Otis arrangement-wise and helped him put them together and all that where I didn't, you know, claim any writers or anything 'cause it wasn't necessary. Otis had most of it finished to begin with, and I just helped him do it. But a lot of these things where he had just bits and pieces, I would actually put them together, and we'd make whole songs out of them and go in the next day and record them. So we had a lot of fun together. Otis was a great guy to work with, and he was a great friend.
GROSS: Well, let's listen to the record. This is "Dock Of The Bay."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "(SITTIN' ON) THE DOCK OF THE BAY")
REDDING: (Singing) Sitting in the morning sun. I'll be sitting when the evening comes. Watching the ships roll in. And then I watch them roll away again. Yeah. I'm sitting on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away. Just sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time. I left my home in Georgia headed for the 'Frisco Bay 'cause I've had nothing to live for and look like nothing's going to come my way. So I'm just going to sit on the dock of bay, watching the tide roll away. I'm sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time. Look's like nothing's going to change. Everything still remains the same. I can't do what 10 people tell me to do. So I guess I'll remain the same, yes. Sitting here, resting my bones, and this loneliness won't leave me alone. It's 2,000 miles I roamed just to make this dock my home. Now I'm just going to sit at the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away. Sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time (whistling).
GROSS: I want to ask you about another record. And this is also a song you co-wrote. You co-wrote this one with Wilson Pickett, and it's "Midnight hour." This was, I think, for the first session that you played with Wilson Pickett.
CROPPER: Right, it was.
GROSS: Tell me about writing this song with him.
CROPPER: Well, it's real simple. We knew that he was coming down, and, of course, my connection with the record shop, and I went up and found some stuff that he had sung on. Of course, he sang, you know, with The Falcons, and he had sang some spiritual things. And it seemed like every time that he sang the lead on something, when he got down to the fade out, he would go, oh, wait till the midnight hour. Whoa, see my Jesus in the midnight hour and all of that. I said, that's the guy's ID. So I just took that right there and presented it to him with a little idea. He had a couple of ideas, and what happened was that we picked him up at the airport. They dropped us off at the hotel, and Jerry Wexler and Jim Stewart went out to get something to eat and just talk business. And when they came back, I don't know, it was a couple of hours later, we had "In The Midnight Hour" written and "Don't Fight It." They said, we're going to get out of here, let you guys keep going. And they left, and we wrote a thing called "I'm Not Tired." And we went in the studio the next day, recorded all three songs, and all three songs were hits. Very lucky me, huh?
GROSS: (Laughter) Well, let's hear it "In The Midnight Hour."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR")
WILSON PICKETT: (Singing) I'm going to wait till the midnight hour. That's when my love comes tumbling down. I'm going to wait till the midnight hour. When there's no one else around. I'm going to take you, girl, and hold you and do all the things I told you in the midnight hour. Yes, I am. Oh, yes I am. One more thing I just want to say right here. I'm going to wait till the stars come out...
GROSS: That's Wilson Pickett "In The Midnight Hour," co-written by my guest Steve Cropper, who's featured on guitar.
You also did a lot of work playing behind Sam & Dave, and Sam & Dave were the inspiration for the Aykroyd and Belushi group, The Blues Brothers, and you played with them, as well. What did you think of The Blues Brothers when they got started - or when you got started or whatever.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: What'd you think of - did you think that it was a parody that was in bad taste at all? You know, like two white guys doing their parody of Black singers, two white guys who probably fantasize about themselves sometimes of being (laughter) Black singers. But what was your take on it?
CROPPER: Well, you know, they got a lot of bad rap on that, I think, initially, and a lot of people, for some reason, thought that John and Danny were kind of scoffing Black musicians for some reason. That's not the case at all. And what I found out was really the contrary to all of that. They had such a love for that kind of music, for rhythm and blues and so forth. And I couldn't believe - I went to John's house one day, and he showed me a collection of blues stuff that I - it just blew me away. I'd never seen that big of a collection of blues music. Of course, being in Chicago, he had a lot of access to a lot of stuff that, of course, we never heard in Memphis and so forth. It never really - most of it didn't reach the record shop that I worked in.
But when you mentioned about Sam & Dave being their influence, that is something that really came about whenever they decided to put a band together and got Duck Dunn and myself involved in a group because they were, from the show, you know, from the routine they did on the show, their concept of an album at that point was strictly doing nothing but blues kind of songs, and, you know, "Stinks (ph)" by The Downchild Blues Band and, you know, Delbert McClinton stuff and all those kind of things.
And I felt, you know, I'd been in the business a long time, and I felt if they wanted me to contribute anything to this, I thought they should go a little bit more commercial. And so it was my suggestion, along with Duck Dunn and all, that we do something like "Soul Man." And we later did "Who's Making Love," as well. But we talked them into doing that, and then they started asking about, well, how did Sam & Dave do it, you know, and so we kind of started showing them some of the routines, like some of the dance things that Sam & Dave would do on stage. And they'd go, yeah, man, this could be fun. So that's something that was sort of a new ingredient put in The Blues Brothers act as we started making preparation to do a show.
BIANCULLI: Steve Cropper spoke with Terry Gross in 1990. He died Wednesday at age 84. After a break, Kevin Whitehead will celebrate the 100th birthday of jazz organist Jimmy Smith, even though the celebration may be a few years early. Also, we note the passing of playwright Tom Stoppard, who died last week at age 88. And critic-at-large John Powers reviews the new Brazilian film, "The Secret Agent." I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOLD ON I'M COMIN'")
SAM AND DAVE: (Singing) Don't you ever be sad. Lean on me when the times are bad. When the day comes and you're down in a river of trouble and about to drown, hold on, I'm comin'. Hold on, I'm comin'. I'm on my way, your lover. If you get cold, yeah, I will be your cover. Don't have to worry 'cause I'm here. Don't need to suffer, baby, 'cause I'm here. Just hold on, I'm comin'. Hold on, I'm comin'. Hold on, I'm comin'. Hold on, I'm comin. Reach out to me for satisfaction, yeah. Call my name, yeah, for reaction, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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