Steve Cropper, legendary Booker T. and the M.G.'s and Stax Records guitarist, dies at 84

On December 3, 2025, the night before we heard the news of Steve Cropper’s passing, my wife and I were jamming to a simple loop. Distracted, at one point I strayed into a noodle that wasn’t doing my wife or the song any favors. Then a voice spoke loudly in my head: “Booker T. and the M.G.’s, you idiot! Cropper! Now!” In a shot I was off the noodle bus and back on track.That voice, it seems, sat at the shoulder of many guitarists. Such was the reach and influence of a musician that could be hookmeister, bedrock, silk, switchblade, or the lonely cry at the root of a heartbreaking melody. Cropper’s signature, however, was his economy and restraint—much of which was reinforced by his keen producer’s ear. Keith Richards, one of the kings of rhythm and timing, was once asked what he thought of Cropper. Richards, who can spiel when moved, was reduced to two words: “Perfect, man.” And truly, it’s hard to find a moment in Cropper’s body of work as rhythm guitarist, lead ace, and producer that isn’t, by some measure, impeccable.Steve Cropper was born on October 21, 1941, in rural Dora, MO. But before he was 10, his family moved to Memphis. Like any open-minded, musically inclined individual with access to a radio in that time and place, Cropper found a feast for the ears in Memphis in the 1950s—blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, country, and the rockabilly percolations bubbling up from Sun Records.Cropper was playing guitar by the time he was 14. And his influences around that time tell much about the sum that would become the Cropper style. From jazz giant Tal Farlow he learned how to dance around a melody with precision. From Chet Atkins, he took a sense for how chord melody and the twang and pop of an electric guitar could work together. Chuck Berry opened his ears to the power of relentless, uptempo, driving rhythm. And Jimmy Reed taught him the ways of deriving swing from skeletal, haunting simplicity.
By the time he was 20, Cropper had joined forces, along with future Booker T. and the M.G.’s bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, in an instrumental band that evolved into the Mar-Keys, which hit number 3 with “Last Night,” a release on Memphis-based Satellite Records. Within a few years, Satellite became Stax, and on the strength of the Carla Thomas single “Cause I Love You,” entered a distribution deal with Atlantic Records. Stax’s agreement with Atlantic meant product and hits had to keep coming. And that effort was facilitated by Stax’s in-house band, which featured Cropper, drummer Al Jackson Jr., and bassist Lewis Steinberg. That trio, with organist Booker T. Jones, further boosted Stax’s fortune and profile, when an impromptu jam intended as a B-side became “Green Onions”Though “Green Onions” showcases the awesome collective strength of Booker T. and the M.G.’s as a mighty groove machine, Cropper’s contributions to the track included a lock-step doubling of Lewis Steinberg’s bass, a horn section-style stab on the one, and a lead that is the essence of economy and attitude, reflecting Ike Turner or Johnny Guitar Watson’s fiery r&b fretwork. Cropper, in fact, provided much of the tune’s dynamics. The song may have legitimized Stax. But it also cemented Booker T. and the M.G.’s reputation as a band’s band, revered by surf and garage bands on the West Coast, soul and r&b artists working in the South and on the East Coast, and perhaps most notably, the bands that would soon make up the British Invasion.
Had the M.G.’s left behind “Green Onions” alone, they would have been legendary. But the band, and Cropper, in particular, would go on to make Stax one of the most vital and important labels of the 1960s, and he would lend a hand in nourishing the careers of some of some of soul music’s most titanic figures. Cropper ultimately became the front-line producer at Stax and their subsidiary Volt. And his production style mirrored his approach to guitar. It was lean, hard-hitting, dripping with groove, but also spacious enough to make room for the awesome voices that passed through Stax’s Memphis studios. Cropper’s production was so powerful and full of sinewy punch that it practically tormented British artists who struggled to find Stax’s potency in their own studios. At one point the Beatles were slated to work with Cropper on the LP that eventually became Revolver. That didn’t pan out, but Cropper’s production, recording, and performing prowess would still touch millions of people through hits from Sam and Dave, Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Eddie Floyd, and, most monumentally, Otis Redding, who co-authored “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay” with Cropper (who also adorns the yearning track with pearls of subtle guitar shading that virtually define the instrument’s role in soul balladry).Cropper didn’t stop working after Stax’s hits dried up. He continued to produce records and play sessions, and reached millions more playing himself in the Blues Brothers film. He toured—once again with the M.G.’s—backing Neil Young at the height of Young’s volcanic reawakening in the 1990s. Cropper was, generally speaking, a quiet, gentlemanly guy, quite happy to deliver the goods in relative anonymity as sparks flew around him—qualities evident in essential performance films like Shake! Otis Live at Monterey and footage from the Stax tour of Europe in 1967. And improbably, perhaps, in light of his reserve, Cropper’s music and his impeccable touch as a guitarist and producer is everywhere where people listen. His legacy and influence are matched by few.