Steve Cropper, the guitarist whose riffs were so understated they made minimalism look ostentatious, has finally laid down his Telecaster at the age of eighty-four, presumably after checking it was in tune one last time. He died peacefully in Nashville, surrounded by amplifiers that still worked and a family who had long ago accepted that 'just one more take' was a lifelong commitment.
Cropper never sought the spotlight; he merely stood in it by accident while everyone else was busy falling over. As the house guitarist at Stax Records he supplied the backbone to more soul classics than most people have functioning vertebrae. Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” whistles because Cropper’s little guitar figure the way a bored man whistles while waiting for a bus that will never arrive; Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man” struts because Cropper refused to strut himself; and Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” only reached the midnight hour because Cropper counted it in at exactly the right tempo, which is to say, not too fast, not too slow, just fast enough to remind you that life is short but grooves can be eternal.
He co-wrote many of these songs yet insisted his name appear in smaller type, a humility so extreme it bordered on the subversive. While other guitar heroes of the era were busy inventing new ways to look as if they’d been electrocuted, Cropper stood stage right in a short-sleeved shirt, playing chords so clean you could have performed surgery on them. Jimi Hendrix set fire to his instrument; Eric Clapton informed us that he was God; Steve Cropper simply made the drummer sound better, an act of generosity that should have earned him a Nobel Peace Prize. In later years he joined the Blues Brothers Band, where his reward was to wear a black suit and dark glasses indoors while Dan Aykroyd shouted. He endured this with the serene expression of a man who has seen every possible futures and concluded this one will do. Film buffs will remember him as the only musician in that enterprise who appeared to have met actual Black people.
Cropper outlived the Stax building, the original Muscle Shoals rhythm section, and most of the hair in Memphis. He is survived by a wife who still laughs at his jokes, several children who can actually play, and millions of listeners who never knew his name but can hum his licks in the shower. Somewhere tonight, a bar band is murdering “Green Onions.” Steve would have winced, corrected the tempo, and made it immortal. He has now, with typical restraint, left the stage without an encore.