Steven Lee Cropper\u00a0(October 21, 1941 \u2013 December 3, 2025), sometimes known as “The Colonel”, was an American guitarist, songwriter and record producer.\u00a0 You may not know his name, but you know his sound, from Dock on the Bay (which\u00a0he co-wrote with Otis Redding), Soul Man, In the Midnight Hour, Knock on Wood and Ive Been Loving You Too Long.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cropper was born in\u00a0Dora, Missouri<\/a>\u00a0on October 21, 1941.[6]<\/a>\u00a0His family moved to\u00a0Memphis<\/a>\u00a0at age 9.\u00a0 In Memphis, he was exposed to\u00a0black church music<\/a>, which had an impact on him musically.[7]<\/a>\u00a0By the time he was 14, he had begun to play guitar. Within a few year, he formed a dance band with guitarist Charlie Freeman called the Royal Spades. This band\u00a0eventually became\u00a0the Mar-Keys<\/a>.[8]<\/a>\u00a0who\u00a0in 1961 had a hit single,\u00a0“Last Night<\/a>“.\u00a0 He and his band toured the Chitlin circuit behind their hit. While The Beales were trying to decide whether to stick at it and\u00a0before The Rolling Stones even existed, the Mar-Keys played The Regal Theatre in Chicago (Stanley Booth, Rhythm Oil).\u00a0 <\/p>\n Cropper came off the road to play in the STAX\u00a0Records* house band. He played on numerous hits, including the aforementioned Knock on Wood, Midnight Hour and Soul Man.\u00a0 He also collaborated with Otis Redding on Dock\u00a0of the Bay and Ive been loving you too Long and with Eddie Floyd (Knock on Wood).\u00a0 He had hits in his own right with the Staxx house band, Booker T and the MGs on such numbers as Green Onions and Time is Tight.\u00a0 \u2018<\/p>\n Cropper developed a distinctive guitar style<\/a>\u00a0synthesized out of black r&b and gospel. It involves the use of\u00a03 strong chord\u00a0arpegios, double stop runs\u00a0and allusions to the bass line,<\/p>\n Said Charles Murray\u00a0\u201cIt favors trills\u00a0and\u00a0hammer-ons, and is both delicate and punchy. It is a style costumed made for accompanying vocalists\u201d.\u00a0What it doesn\u2019t feature the kind of bent horn-line notes featured by\u00a0 BB King (what Muddy Water called the string-sqeeze sound)m and favored by White guitar men like Clapton and Stevie Vaughan.\u00a0Jimi Hendrix, wplayed rhythm more in the style favored by Cropper.<\/a>\u00a0Part of his signature sound was a Fender Telecaster played through a Fender Amp.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cropper left STAX\u00a0in the 1970s and continued his career as a session man and producer, laying his economic but soulful licks on records by Rod Stewart, Ringo Star,\u00a0Elton John, and more dubiously, the neo-blackface Blues Brothers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Let\u2019s let the mans music speak for itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last Night<\/p>\n Green Onions<\/p>\n Soul Man\u00a0<\/p>\n Dock of the Bay<\/p>\n Rest in power.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n *Edit, A word about STAX Records,\u00a0 The label as founded by silbings Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton (hence St-Ax). Their original intent was to record country and rockabilly acts, but successes with Rufas and Carla Thomas, and urging from producer Chips Moman (\u201cDark End of the Street\u201d)\u00a0created momentum in that direction.\u00a0 They set up shop in a former movie theater.\u00a0 A distribution deal with Atlantic Records (1965) introduced their records to a natioanal market.\u00a0\u00a0In the Midnight Hour, Soul Man and other hits soon followed.\u00a0 White producers making records with black musicians was not unusual, but black and white musicians playing together in the house brand was less common. Likewie was the production team of Issac Hays and David Porter or business manager Al Bell, who became a co-ownwer of STAX,\u00a0 New South indeed.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steven Lee Cropper\u00a0(October 21, 1941 \u2013 December 3, 2025), sometimes known as “The Colonel”, was an American guitarist,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-329281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}