Esteemed musician Steve Cropper, the renowned guitarist with the seminal soul group Booker T & the MGs, has left us at the age of 84.
The guitar virtuoso, who performed on and helped pen Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, succumbed on Wednesday in Nashville.
Considered among the best studio bands in soul music, the quartet the MGs was the house band of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax Records and is primarily known for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.
Cropper also joined the blues revival band The Blues Brothers in the late '70s and played on their successful version of Soul Man.
"Steve was a deeply admired musician, songwriter, and producer whose immense talent touched generations around the world," his family expressed in a release.
"While we grieve the loss of a husband, father, and friend, we take solace knowing that Steve will live forever through his music," they added.
A specific cause was not released at this time.
A friend, Eddie Gore, stated he was with Cropper just the day before in Nashville, where the guitarist had been working on new music.
"He's such a wonderful human," Gore remarked. "We were lucky to have him, for sure."
A Storied Musical Path
Voted the runner-up for guitarist of all time by a music periodical in 1996, Cropper began working at Stax in 1961 at the age of 20.
A year later, the MGs came together, featuring keyboardist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg - who was succeeded by Donald "Duck" Dunn in 1964.
The band was entered into 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 get off on the fact that I can play something over and over, while other guitar players avoid that approach. They are reluctant to repeat the same phrase 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 co-wrote Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.
According to available information, he was "integral to the majority of record released by Stax from the fall of 1961 through the end of 1970".
"We would truly spend long days in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had a roster of artists signed to the label, so we had a extremely demanding schedule."
