🔗 Share this article

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 played on and collaborated on writing the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, succumbed this past Wednesday in Music City, Nashville.

Often cited among the best studio bands in soul and R&B, the quartet Booker T. Jones and the MGs was the house band of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax and is primarily known for their classic 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper went on to join the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act The Blues Brothers in the late '70s and performed on their popular rendition of Soul Man.

"Steve was a deeply admired guitarist, composer, and producer whose immense talent impacted millions of lives around the world," his family expressed in a release.

"While we feel sorrow for the loss of a family man and friend, we are consoled knowing that Steve will endure through his music," they added.

A cause of death was not disclosed.

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

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

A Storied Musical Path

Ranked the number two guitarist of all time by a music periodical in 1996, Cropper first found employment at the Stax label in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs came together, consisting of keyboardist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg - who was succeeded 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 seen myself as a rhythm guitarist," Cropper remarked in a previous conversation. "I enjoy the fact that I can play something over and over, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They won't even play the same riff twice."

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

According to available information, he was "involved in the majority of record put out by Stax from 1961 through year end 1970".

"We would literally spend long days in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had nearly 20 artists we worked with, so we had a very hectic schedule."