A week ago, the world mourned the passing Steve Cropper, a key figure in Southern soul music. Cropper was the guitar player in Booker T. & the MG’s, who were the house band at the legendary Stax Recording Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. He wrote and played songs for the likes of Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, and Georgia’s own Otis Redding. Salvation South editor Chuck Reece has a remembrance. 

Steve Cropper

Steve Cropper

Credit: Mark Humphrey / AP

 

TRANSCRIPT:

MUSIC: Sam And Dave - "Soul Man"

Chuck Reece: When the marvelous Memphis guitar player Steve Cropper died at age eighty-four, he was remembered for many achievements. 

He was a primary architect of the Southern soul music that rose from Memphis in the nineteen-sixties. He won multiple Grammy Awards. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. 

He was one of those rare studio musicians whose playing is so hot, so remarkable, that the singer feels moved by the spirit to call out his name, as Sam Moore of Sam & Dave did in nineteen-sixty-seven:

Sam Moore [from "Soul Man"]: I’m a soul man / I’m a soul man / Play it, Steve!

Chuck Reece: Steve Cropper played it. His sound was indelible, and it will live on. The songs he wrote will live on, too.

We should also remember something else about Steve Cropper—that what mattered to him was alwaysthe music, and never the color of the skin of the people who wrote and sang it. Another pioneer of the soul music Cropper made in Memphis was William Bell, a tremendous singer and songwriter. A couple of years ago, Mr. Bell told me a story about one night when he and Steve Cropper were the last to leave the Stax studio. 

William Bell: I remember one night Steve Cropper and I were working…and we walked out about 2 in the morning and turned around to lock the doors of Stax Records. And the police were sitting across the street. They…jumped out, guns drawn and everything, put us up against the wall and they were talking to us about breaking in. We've got keys, locking the door. I mean, how can we be breaking in, you know? 

Chuck Reece: Inside Stax, Bell, a Black man, and Cropper, a white man, were making global hit records. But outside, on McLemore Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, Jim Crow was still the law of the land. 

Bell and Cropper were not arrested that night, but racist Memphis policemen repeatedly harassed them. 

William Bell: They would let us go and we'd hop in the car. They always wanted him to get in the backseat. 

Chuck Reece: The cops wanted it to appear that Bell was Cropper’s chauffeur. Cropper refused.

William Bell: He would get in the front seat beside me and we would drive home in one car and they would tailgate us like maybe two feet from our bumper, just hoping we would swerve or something so they could pull us over. And then after I would drop Steve off at his house, they would follow me home until I got home and sat down out front of my house until I pull up in the driveway and walk in the house. It was just harassment. 

Chuck Reece:  So let’s remember Steve Cropper for the sizzling, stinging sound of his guitar. Let’s remember him for the soulful songs he wrote. But let’s also remember him because he sat beside, and stood up beside, his brothers. 

Come see us anytime at SalvationSouth.com. 

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Salvation South editor Chuck Reece comments on Southern culture and values in a weekly segment that airs Wednesdays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on GPB Radio. Salvation South Deluxe is a series of longer Salvation South episodes which tell deeper stories of the Southern experience through the unique voices that live it. You can also find them here at GPB.org/Salvation-South and wherever you get your podcasts.