Steve Cropper, the prodigious guitarist, songwriter and producer who played a pivotal role in shaping the lean gutbucket soul music made at Memphis’s Stax Records in the 1960s and ’70s, died on Wednesday in Nashville. He was 84.
His death, at a rehabilitation facility, was confirmed by his wife, Angel Cropper, who did not specify the cause.
As a member of Booker T. & the MG’s, the house rhythm section at Stax, Mr. Cropper played the snarling Fender Telecaster lick on “Green Onions,” the funky hit instrumental by the MG’s from 1962. He also contributed the ringing guitar figure that opened Sam & Dave’s gospel-steeped “Soul Man,” the 1966 single on which the singer Sam Moore shouted, “Play it, Steve!” to cue Mr. Cropper’s stinging single-string solo on the chorus. Both records were Top 10 pop hits and reached No. 1 on the R&B chart.
Mr. Cropper had an innate feel for a groove as well as a penchant for feeling over flash — gifts evident in his bell-toned guitar work on Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” In 2015, he was ranked 39th on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. Britain’s Mojo magazine slotted him second, behind only Jimi Hendrix, on a similar list of guitarists published in 1996.
“I’ve always thought of myself as a rhythm player,” Mr. Cropper said in an interview with Guitar.com in 2021. “I get off on the fact that I can play something over and over and over, while other guitar players don’t want to even know about that. They won’t even play the same riff or the same lick twice.”
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