🔗 Share this article

Steve Cropper, the acclaimed guitarist with Booker T and the MGs, has left us at the age of 84.

The musician, who performed on and co-wrote the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, succumbed this past Wednesday in Nashville.

Widely regarded among the greatest supporting groups in soul music, the quartet Booker T & the MGs was the core musical unit of the historic Memphis label Stax and is most famous for their 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper went on to join the blues revival band The Blues Brothers in the 1970s and featured on their successful version of Soul Man.

"Steve was a deeply admired artist, writer, and producer whose immense talent touched generations around the world," his family expressed in a release.

"While we grieve the loss of a family man and friend, we take solace knowing that Steve will endure through his music," they added.

A specific cause was not immediately known.

A friend, Eddie Gore, stated he was with Cropper recently in Nashville, where the guitarist was developing new music.

"He's such a good human," Gore said. "We were blessed to have him, for sure."

A Storied Musical Path

Named the number two guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper began working at Stax Records in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs were founded, consisting of organist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg - who was replaced by Donald "Duck" Dunn in 1964.

The band was honored by inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

"I've always thought of myself as a player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper remarked in a previous conversation. "I enjoy the fact that I can play something consistently, while other guitar players avoid that approach. They won't even play the same phrase twice."

In addition to being a guitarist, Cropper was a vastly creative songwriter, and besides Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he helped write Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.

According to available information, he was "a part of virtually every record issued by Stax from 1961 through year end 1970".

"We would truly spend long days in the studio," Cropper said. "I think we had a roster of artists on the roster, so we had a pretty busy schedule."