By: Rick Landers
Steve Cropper – Photo credit Dawn Studios
It’s uncanny how someone with the legendary musical chops, legacy of songwriting masterpieces and world-class reputation can fly below the radar of popular culture.
Steve Cropper has moved in the world of music with with such popular icons as Elvis Presley Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Johnny Cash, Booker T. Jones, Dave Mason, Little Richard, and hundreds of other well-known musicians, yet he’s mostly known within music celebrated circles.
Cropper is one among them and a highly respected equal in the pantheon of musical inventiveness and hip, hepcat coolness, but he appears to be quite comfortable without the whirl of celebrity that can wrestle one away from the freedom of a private life.
When a teen in high school, Steve and his friends formed a band called The Mar-Keys, a group that had an instrumental, “Last Night” that charted at #3 on Billboard. He and his childhood best friend, Duck Dunn, would also later find themselves trading or conjoining guitar licks, with Booker T. and the MGs, a milestone group that gave us a groove jazz raunch called “Green Onions”. The song has a magnetic groove and an occasional cat-like turgid growl of a riff from Cropper’s Telecaster. Today, over fifty years later, the dual bass lines of Dunn and Cropper remain cool and timeless.
Steve would hang with Otis Redding and co-write “Sitting on the Dock of a Bay”, work with Wilson Pickett as a co-writer of “In the Midnight Hour”, Sam and Dave’s “Soul Man” has the ink marks of Cropper embedded in it and as a Stax session player his Telecaster can be heard on scores of releases.
And later as a member of The Blues Brothers with John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, Cropper and Duck would rub shoulders with such luminaries as, Aretha Franklin, John Candy, Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, Carrie Fisher, James Brown, Twiggy, John Lee Hooker and other musician-actors.
There’s more, there’s much more, but we can only hope for an autobiography of the man Mojo magazine ranked as the best guitar player in the world.
Today, we find Steve Cropper out on the road with another guitar master and singer-songwriter, Dave Mason (Traffic), who has his own fascinating story to tell. Their Rock and Soul Revue launches this week. We can expect to hear many of the hit songs that they’ve appeared on, like “Green Onions”, “Dear Mr. Fantasy”, “All Along the Watchtower”, “We Just Disagree”, or at least we can hope that they’ve included songs that will pull back the curtain of time for many of us and introduce the best of classic rock and soul to a new generation of fans.
Steve Cropper and Dave Mason Rock & Soul Review Tour 2018
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Rick Landers: I was hunting around while researching for our interview for an autobiography of you, but it looks like you haven’t written one. Is there a book out on your life, that’d be pretty cool to read?
Steve Cropper: No, people they’ve been asking me that for 25 years I don’t know if I do or not, I’ve thought about it several times and about taking off a month or two and write a book.
I know, I should have been writing and done it a long time ago, all the time.
I’d like to take the project and do it. That’s how I am. Like great painters who paint one painting an hour here and on this painting an hour, move it around and never get bored.
I don’t think of it that way, I’d rather start from scratch and wind up with an end result. I can kick my own butt, because people ask me all the time, “Is there a book?” “When you gonna write a book?”.
Rick: A friend of mine, bassist Mark Gougeon, played with Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, recently told me he loved Duck Dunn’s bass playing and recalled playing “Liberty” while on tour with Mitch. Do you remember the song?
Steve Cropper: Liberty! Absolutely. Those guys are great.
Rick: I recall seeing you guys at Detroit’s Cobo Hall with Wilbert Harrison and Creedence Clearwater Revival and you guys got a standing ovation from that huge crowd, and blew everyone away. You guys were great, so I just want to say a belated thank you!
Steve: Absolutely!
I wanted to do some more, and his people made him (Booker T. Jones) a big offer, but he went off to do something else.
Steve Cropper: I was in a band that use to play in garages, In high school we were already playing jobs in our senior proms in our junior year. We were pretty good, I like to think we were, because we also played all the hits of the time. So, the schools in Memphis would hire us because we’d play all those song. They couldn’t afford those bands they were listening to, The Royales and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. They could afford us and we was just glad to play.
Rick: Early on you and your high school band, the Mar-Keys had a hit “Last Night”, that was a number one hit, wasn’t it?
Steve Cropper: It was number three. I couldn’t figure it out. I don’t know, forty odd some years to figure out why it was a hit. I recall the first time I played it in the living room on the console record player, my mom started doing the twist!
I’d have to say it was probably one of the first twist instrumentals. Because Hank Ballard and the Midnighters did it, Chubby Checker on American Bandstand did it. I never thought of “The Twist” when we did ”Last Night”. Pat Boone covered it. (Steve sings the two notes) It’s that simple, two notes.
Steve Cropper: Ah, history books say Steve Cropper wasn’t even ever in the Mark-Keys, because there’s no guitar on the record. Aha, but I was on the session, on the record. If you listen to the record you can you can hear a hold down on the organ. One C note I think, I’m holding it down.
So Smoochy, being Jerry Lee “Smoochy” Smith could play, Smoochy who wrote the lick (Steve sings the lick) That was his lick. We knew it was a hit lick. He wanted to play it. And, they wanted to play a piano solo. So, I held that note down for him when he played.
Rick: So, you were in The Mark-Keys and you’re definitely on that record and we’ve got that done.
Steve Cropper: Playing together in band together in high school.
Rick: Were you surprised to hear Screaming Jay Hawkins sing “Bite It”?
Steve Cropper: I was more surprised when Little Richard, he took “Green Onions in ’62. It just had Penniman as the writer. He probably didn’t know who the writers were.
They turned it around real easy. I mean, Little Richard turned out to be a friend of mine and I never mentioned it to him. I know he didn’t do it on purpose. But, he took “Green Onions” and wrote some kind of verse to it.
Rick: Let’s talk a little about guitar. When you were first drawn to guitar I recall that a lot of bands, their lead instrument wasn’t guitar, it was saxophone. So, what drew you to the guitar?
Steve Cropper: Ah, that’s a good question. I think because some of my buddies in school played guitar.
You reminded me of Joey Dee and the Starlighters and “The Peppermint Twist” and their saxophone player use to hang from the ceiling in this club they played in Philly or wherever it was. He’d play that solo upside down. [Laughs].
But, I don’t know we’re influenced by Chuck Berry, people like that, and influenced by Lowman Pauling from the Five Royales, because Duck and I went out and saw them one night. We played this little club downstairs and the guy who owned ite said, “Nobody will come see you guys.” So we had the night off. So, Duck and I got tickets and it was the Beverly Ballroom and we got to see Lowman Pauling play live and it just blew us away.
I went home and he use to hang his guitar way down by his knees. Well, Chuck Berry did that too, but Chuck would take a regular strap and hang the guitar down there. So, I get home that night and I’m rouncing through my closet and my Mom gets up and asks, “Steve what ya doing?” and I say, “I’m trying to find some old belts.” And I did that. I finally found them, put them together and had a long strap.
Rick: Do you still have it?
Steve Cropper: Ah, no wish I did. Wish I had the guitar too. I’ve got pictures of it.
Rick: What kind of guitar?
Steve Cropper: A Byrdland at that tine.
Rick: What got you into Teles?
Steve Cropper: Well, I started doing sessions and I found out that the Tele worked a lot better, it was more versatile for sessions than a Gibson was. Nothing to do with Gibson.
If you hit chords on a Gibson, it’s gonna distort slightly and with the Telecaster, it didn’t. Now, I never picked up on the Strat, because that’s more a player’s guitar. And that’s what Dave Mason does, most of his guitars are built on the Strat.
I’m a Tele guy, always been one. Even though the one I play now wasn’t made by Fender. I have several. Nothing against Fender, not at all, there’s nothing political there or anything, nothing against those guys. I love those guys and they love me. And I know Henry Juszkiewicz. He lives down the road and I can walk to his house.
And it was all about endorsing. I’m just one of those guys. I don’t endorse things. You know, I go down and buy my own strings.
I did endorse a guitar for a long time, with Peavey. And the reason I did it was Harley Peavy said he’d make me a guitar for under a thousand dollars. I said that’s what I’ve gotta have. It’s called a Cropper Classic, made for about six or seven years – it’s a good guitar.
Dexterity-wise they’re not fast. They’re a very tight guitar if you play it properly. And a lot of the rock guys did the Les Paul and the other ones did the Strats, because it’s a faster instrument. You can play more notes faster. The Tele is real tight, but it’s great for chords and rhythm lines and that kind of stuff. And you can play a lot of notes.
Especially in the Stax days, and before the Stax time, I use to double the bass lines a lot. There was a lot of them like that. Even on “Last Night”, on “Green Onions” I basically doubled the bass on it, it’s basically a Fender bass (Duck Dunn) and an Esquire (Steve Cropper).
The one I used on “Dock of the Bay”, the single stuff, is in the Smithsonian now. I gave it to them,. The other one, I think they got on display already. The other one is the frog inlay guitar. And it’s a the blonde neck Telecaster I used on Rod Stewart’s Atlantic Crossing album. On “Tonight’s the Night” and on all of those songs, I used it on the whole album and I think he had four or five hits on that one.
Rick: I was watching a video of you guys and back in the day a lot of bass players used big thick picks, but Dunn is playing finger style. I was a bit surprised to see that.
Steve Cropper: With Duck what people don’t know was his sound is like he’s playing with pick, but he had real, real stiff fingernails and he’d play the upstroke and would pop it. He’d start with a finger and he’d pop off and the last thing you’d hear was his fingernail hitting the string and it sounded like he was playing with a pick.
He came up with some pretty great bass lines. He was good when he played with other people he played with too. Duck was something. He knew a lot about music. He didn’t know whole hell of a lot about bass [Laughs] But, he could play these lines!
He played so solid and create these lines and and when he played with a good drummer he was dead on. You put him on his own and he’d go “Where do I go?”. I asked him in to do some handclaps one time. I realized, I won’t do that again!
I needed some handclaps, so Duck was out there in the hall and I said “Hey man, come in hear and do some hand claps.” Oops! [Laughs]
Rick: I was listening to Nudge it Up A Notch with Felix Cavaliere. And on “To Make it Right” You got a really cool groove going and in the first couple of bars I heard this Curtis Mayfield thing.
Steve Cropper – Photo credit: Dawn Studios
Steve Cropper: There ya go, yeah. I loved Curtis. He was great. Booker knew more about what Curtis was actually doing. I would stand down stage and watch him play and still couldn’t figure out everything he was doing. And one of the neat things was we got to do a tribute one time for the Grammies and they did a tribute after he passed away
Rick: Les Paul had a tribute for his 95th birthday at Carnegie Hall, were you there?
Steve Cropper: Naw, unfortunately. We did a thing here at the Ryman, And they had bunch of musicians come in and play, and his own band was there. I did go down and play on that.
Rick: Can you tell us about your own studio?
Steve Cropper: The thing about the studio, the old one it’s not there, [Laughs] they finally ran me out of a town or made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. And I said,”Okay”, We moved to a 22-story high rise, however, we are now in the RCA building the one RCA built for Elvis Presley in ‘64. And we took over the little room in the back, called Studio C and I think Dave Cobb has Studio A, and B is a museum and has been for a long time.
First session I ever did in Nashville, and I was still in high school or just out. I drove up here and played a little session, another session in that Studio B. I don’t even remember what the song was, I remember the time doing it and all that, but don’t remember the who the artist was.
Rick: Did you ever go swimming in Webb Pierce’s guitar shaped swimming pool about a block away?
Steve Cropper: No, I know where that is, at the motel up there? I can walk to it from RCA real easy. There’s a room Billy Burnette stayed in and they told him that Elvis stayed in that room one time.
Rick: How long have you known Dave Mason?
Steve Cropper: Forever. But, I’ve been Europe working and he’s here. so there you go.
He told me the other day that he was at the concert I did in ’67 at Hammersmith Odeon. He was there with a bunch of guys. I don’t know how old he was, he’s younger than me, a little bit. I was 26 then, Elvis and I were both 26 then.
Rick: Let’s talk about your Rock and Soul Revue tour with Dave?
Steve Cropper: I think my pr guy Geddes Bootwright, I didn’t tell him I wasn’t going back to Europe, he might have taken it that way. We had a new album out with the Blues Brothers band and we put it out around October, November and it ran about four months, usually albums today now run about four days.
This one kept going because colleges kept picking it and playing it,
And, I said maybe this is the one they’re looking for. Well, it’s kind of run its course now, I guess. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, it’s called, The Last Shade of Blue Before Black. It did real good. We were all surprised it did as good as it did.
And I had mentioned on a gig last year, and told the guys I know we need some work in the States, but we don’t want to stop playing Europe. And they only way to do that is to get a new album and the guys jumped on it. We had more songs than we could possibly record for three albums. So, we recorded it they mixed it and it turned out real good,
Rick: On the tour with Dave Mason are you going to be recording for a DVD?
Steve Cropper: We will and we already did one, up in North Carolina, recorded a show which someone will edit and turn it into a DVD that fans can buy as merchandise, if they want. And it will be basically the same show, I don’t think we’ll change it that much.
After we finish we said, “Well, that was fun!” And there was nothing about changing things. There was no comments on the ride home about changing things, or doing this first or doing this last, or changing the arrangements. Just keep the show going.
I don’t know if we’ll do it for some show. There’s some songs we took out that Dave might want to put back in, which is okay. We’ll just do that, do that and with the band, and some days we do have to rehearse again before we open.
We open up in Kansas City I think on the Fifth (July), and Dave wants to rehearse again on the Fourth. My wife says, “The Fourth!?” I think I’ve actually only stayed at home only three or four times in some thirty odd years. We’re usually in Europe and they don’t celebrate it, of course! [Laughs]
So, we just stick around the hotel and find something on tv, sometimes bicycle racing. They show a lot of that over there. And the Grand Prix, they cover that a lot. We watch either bicycling or cricket, and sometimes tennis.
Rick: Did you ever play the Grande Ballroom in Detroit?
Steve Cropper: I don’t think we ever played we did that, we went to a few shows with the Mar-Keys, I went back to recording, then we went out with Booker T and we went out to rock festivals,
Rick: I think of “Green Onions” in terms of Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”, Santo’s and Johnny’s “Sleepwalk”. It was very cool and slinky song, a real classic. I’ve gotta say that I’ve much preferred it when it’s played at a slower tempo.
Steve Cropper: I think when we played it too fast, Duck and I would look at each other, but then where’s the fire? So, we just had a rule, if it starts fast, you keep it fast, you don’t slow things down back to where it’s suppose to be. You just keep it up there. That’s all you can do. If you play it too slow, it’ll stay that way. We were sticklers on that. The groove was what counted.
Steve Cropper: I don’t. I did a little but, now days it really hurts my dexterity. I can’t play one. All those country guys, they know how to string it with looser strings.
I don’t play with a capo either. So, it’s a stretch for me.
About the Royales, on my album I’d written that all of the songs were written before 1958. But, I did some research later and found out they were all written prior to 1953. Lowman wrote most of those songs in the ‘40s.
So, what happened, I grew up on those songs and what had happened was King Records bought them and bought the masters and re-released them.
Rick: They were on Appolo before that, right?
Steve Cropper: Something like that, a lot of those guys came out of spiritual groups. Church groups. Lowman probably did too, probably came out of church. But after that hit run, the Royales went back to the church.
Rick: To wrap this up, let me ask you one more question. How’s your golf game compared to your wife’s? And be honest!
Steve Cropper: [Laughs] Well, my wife is on the golf course course right now and my daughter’s a sub-scratch golfer.
I am and have played all my life. And I thought, you know I married this girl and she’s a scratch golfer which is great, her Dad’s a scratch golfer, which is great and I thought maybe some of that knowledge will rub off. It didn’t. [Laughs]
I walk with them and their caddies and I know the world they live in, they’d rather be a guitar player than hitting a golf ball. I don’t know what it is. It’s funny. Most of those golfers are frustrated musicians and most musicians are frustrated golfers.
Rick: I’d like to mention a few names and get some quick responses from you. Let’s start with Otis Redding.
Steve Cropper: Well, my definitive thing is he was the most non- prejudiced human being I’ve ever came in contact with. I mean that sincerely. You really gotta understand the word prejudice and how they talk about other people, and Otis was just the opposite. One of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet. And then Allen (Allen Jackson) said one time, “You know Otis had a million dollar smile”. What he meant by that, he said that if you saw him and you was a hundred yards away, he was already smiling at you and by the time you got up to him you were his new best friend. That’s how Otis was. A good guy, best I’ve ever met.
Rick: Duck Dunn.
Steve Cropper: Well what do you say about a guy you were with from the sixth grade on? He was your best friend. It would take books to describe it. Real great.
He’s the “go to” guy, and you know if you wanted something, if you wanted somebody to talk to, you get on the phone and talk to him. We were pretty close.
Rick: So, you found your values were right on with his.
Steve Cropper: Very much. We agreed on everything. Music and everything.
Steve Cropper: Well, he had a heart of gold, a very talented guy and he also had a big appreciation for music. I don’t think a lot of people knew that he was a drummer and a singer and he was good at both, and an actor, all those things, Never refused an autograph, that’s one thing about his stardom. He never sent anybody away never, never said he didn’t have time. Takes a big heart.
Rick: Jeff Beck:
Steve Cropper: The most talented musician I think I’ve ever worked with. .
Rick: A lot of people put him up at number one or two, with Hendrix.
Steve Cropper: As a guitar player, that’s hard to say. [Chuckles]
Rick: Of course, well that would be Steve Cropper right?
Steve Cropper: [Laughs].
Incredible guitar player. From the time I produced him, what I observed was that he got better with age
But, I get asked all the time in interviews if we’re talking about guitar stuff, I get asked who’s your favorite guitar player and I say, Jose’ Feliciano. And they go: “Well he plays acoustic player, guts stings.”
And I say, “Yeah, but you’ve never heard him play, and I did.”
Rick: A monster guitar player.
Stever Cropper: He’s a MONSTER, big word, all in capitals. You got it. There’s no one better than Jose’. But, he didn’t make it as a guitar player, he made it as a singer. And playing his flamenco style guitar.
Rick: Mitch Ryder.
Steve Cropper: What do I say about Mitch? Very famous guy, a lot of hit records, a lot of talent. We became really, really good friends when he came down to Stax, down in Memphis and I think I told you I ran into him many, many years later and it was like nothing had happened and it was like “Wow!, here ya are!” [Laughs]
Rick: Jerry Wexler.
Steve Cropper: Well, he’s probably one of the most knowledgeable guys and he really did devote his time and appreciation to great musicians.
And to give you an example of that; He called me one night and I was still living in Memphis and this was many years ago and he said, “Steve I recorded a guy last night, and I promise you he played every lick you ever thought of playing. [Pauses]
It was Mark Knopfler and it was after “Sultans of Swing”!
And I never get tired of listening to it. I don’t listen to it often, but when I hear it on the radio I go, “Wow!”. He is so good and didn’t they get inducted this year, didn’t they?
Rick: I’m not sure, but I was going to say he doesn’t use a pick.
Steve Cropper: Yeah, You know, I slow myself down, but I do both. I play a lot of things with a pick, I have to play those chords with a pick to get those shanks, you know we call “shanks” those real sharp, like on “Green Onions” and all that. And I learned to, instead putting it in my teeth, I learned to cradle it and then play with my fingers. But, then it kind of slows me down, but I’m still playing with my fingers a lot. Call myself a fingerpicker, Knopfler can play it all. Knopfler can play everything! I love the way he [Mark Knopfler] went with his music, I really enjoyed that. And I got to play with who he played drums with, Terry Williams, and went and played a show with Dave Edmunds.
Rick: Getting back to Jerry Wexler, do you know what he wanted on his tombstone?
Steve Cropper: Nope.
Rick: More bass! [Both laugh]
Steve Cropper: More cowbell!
Steve Cropper and Dave Mason Rock & Soul Review Tour 2018
