(1967) GREEN ONIONS - Live - Booker T. and MG's

Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us ware that on October 21, 1941 guitarist Steven Lee Cropper was born.

Steve Cropper - Interview Part 1 - 11/4/1984 - Rock Influence (Official)
Steve Cropper - Interview Part 2
Recorded Live: 11/4/1984 - Rock Influence - ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANbuYC8B1uo

Images:
1. Steve Cropper in characteristic pose
2. Guitarist Steve Cropper, drummer Al Jackson, keyboardist Booker T. Jones, and bassist Lewie Steinberg [sitting] at Elmore Avenue in early 1960's
3. Steve & his wife Angel Cropper
4. Steve Cropper in concert, 1990

Biographies
1. browsebiography.com/bio-steve_cropper.htm
2. playitsteve.com/?workprojects=the-whole-story

1. Background from {[http://www.browsebiography.com/bio-steve_cropper.html]}
Steve Cropper (born Steven Lee Cropper) also known as Steve "The Colonel" Cropper, is an American guitarist, songwriter and record producer. He is best known as the guitarist of the Stax Records house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and has backed artists such as Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla, Rufus Thomas and Johnnie Taylor, also acting as producer on many of these records. He later gained fame as a member of the Blues Brothers band.Rolling Stone lists him 36th on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

The incisive guitar lines of Steve Cropper helped define the contours of soul and funk in the 1960s, when he worked unflaggingly as the house guitarist--and often as composer, arranger, producer, and engineer--for Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee. As part of the instrumental quartet Booker T. & the MG's, Cropper not only wrote material for and backed up some of the most famous names in soul but also helped popularize the minimalist funk style that would later engulf rhythm and blues.

Cropper worked as a solo artist and journeyman session player and producer during the 1970s before joining the Blues Brothers group, which introduced Memphis soul to a new generation of listeners. When Booker T. & the MG's regrouped in the early 1990s, they found themselves hipper than ever: they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and toured as rock survivor Neil Young's backup group. By this time, as Walt Hetfield of Guitar Player wrote, Cropper was widely acknowledged to be "the most imitated guitarist of the soul genre."

Cropper was born in Willow Springs, Missouri, in 1941. His family moved to Memphis when he was still a child, and Cropper began playing guitar in his teens; his primary influences were blues players and such early rock and rollers as Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. While still in high school, Cropper and his friend Donald "Duck" Dunn, who played bass, formed a band called the Mar-Keys. Cropper was just 20 years old when the Mar-Keys' single, an instrumental called "Last Night," surged up the charts. The following year, Cropper was hired by Stax to play in the house band.

At a 1962 session backing up rocker Billy Lee Riley, Cropper ended up playing on an instrumental jam composed by keyboardist Booker T. Jones. The result so enthralled Stax head Jim Stewart--who happened to be engineering the session-- that Stewart decided to release "Behave Yourself" as a single on his label's subsidiary Volt. Jones had another little idea for the B-side: a slice of Hammond organ-driven funky blues called "Green Onions." Mixing the sensual, murky proto-rock of Howlin' Wolf with the ultracool jazz grooves of organists like Jimmy Smith and "Big John" Patton, the song became one of the most enduring instrumental tracks of its time.

Cropper, Jones, drummer Al Jackson, Jr., and bassist Lewis Steinberger, all of whom had been playing with the Mark-Keys, became the first incarnation of Booker T. & the MG's--"MG" standing for "Memphis Group"--and Stax had a monster hit single on its hands, even if it was originally supposed to be the B-side. The song sold over a million copies, reached the top of the R&B charts, cruised to the Number Three position on the pop charts, and supported an album of the same name, which reached the Top 40. Other singles, including "Chinese Checkers" and "Mo' Onions," followed to less success.

Steinberger was fired in 1964 and was replaced by Dunn, who subsequently anchored the MG's rhythm section. Cropper and company spent the next few years accompanying soul artists like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and many others, establishing the Stax sound as one of the most influential in all of pop. In fact, the generation of rock musicians in the United States and England who came of age in this period frequently cite Stax and its Detroit competitor Motown as titanic influences. But whereas Motown's silky, refined artists helped make black music more acceptable to white audiences, the Memphis sound refused to hone its rough edges and was thus arguably more important to the development of both the funk and the rock that followed.

Much of the credit for the Memphis sound goes to Cropper, who not only lent a raw urgency and honest emotionalism to his playing but helped nurse many of the classic Stax recordings from inception to mixdown. "I spent all my time--15 hours a day, on average--in the studio," Cropper recalled to Hetfield of Guitar Player. "My wife hated it, my kids hated it, and my friends hated it. I would go to bed at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, get an hour or two of sleep, be on the golf course at 6:30 or 7:00, and be in the studio by 10:30 or 11:00. I would work until midnight or after, go to bed, and do it again."

Indeed, as Cropper testified in a Rolling Stone interview, the classic Sam and Dave single "Soul Man"--though credited on the label to Isaac Hayes and David Porter--bore the imprint of Cropper's style before it had lyrics. Cropper's description of the song's evolution evokes the spontaneous, loose, creative environment at Stax: "Well, when it first started Ike [Hayes] just had some changes on the piano and then it built into that [song]. I worked with him a while and came up with a guitar line; he worked with Duck a while and came up with a bass line. David and Isaac put words to it, Al put the drum beat to it. The horns were worked up on the session. Sam and Dave were taught the song as soon as they got into the session."

Cropper had similar collaborations with Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett. "Otis did more to change my sound than anybody," Cropper told Hetfield of Guitar Player. "He made me think and play a lot simpler, so that different notes would really count dramatically." Cropper co-wrote Redding's monster hit "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay." Pickett, a New York sensation in need of a national hit, came to Memphis "with [Atlantic Records executive and soul music visionary] Jerry Wexler. It was kind of an experience for everybody really to work with somebody like [Wexler]." Wexler picked up the story in his memoir Rhythm and the Blues: "Instead of trying to provide material, I urged [Pickett]--with local genius Steve Cropper--to create his own. I put the two of them in a hotel room with a bottle of Jack Daniels and the simple exhortation- -`'Write!'--which they did." The result was "The Midnight Hour," which was one of Pickett's greatest hits.

As the 1960s progressed, Booker T. & the MG's scored several more hits, notably "Hip Hug-Her," "Soul Limbo," and versions of movie themes, including "Hang 'Em High" and The Graduate's "Mrs. Robinson." The MG's backed Redding at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967, one of the most important such festivals of the decade. Yet the group showed signs of creative fatigue by 1970, when they released McLemore Avenue, an album featuring instrumental versions of all the songs on Abbey Road, the unofficial swan song of British pop revolutionaries the Beatles.

Jones quit the group soon thereafter, and in 1971 Cropper left Stax to found his own label and studio, TMI, in Memphis. He worked as session guitarist and songwriter and acted as producer for a number of disparate artists, including the California funk collective Tower of Power, rockers Poco, folk singer-songwriter John Prine and guitar wizard Jeff Beck. Cropper also released a solo album that featured guest appearances from the MG's and a plethora of other talented players, among them Leon Russell and Buddy Miles.

Later in the 1970s Cropper collaborated with a number of high- profile artists in Los Angeles. Sadly, original MG's drummer Jackson was murdered in 1975, but the surviving members reunited with various drummers; with Stax skinsman Willie Hall they recorded Universal Language in 1977, and nine years later they shared a stage for a couple of songs at the Memphis Music Festival.

When comedians John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd developed the personae of the Blues Brothers and performed a mixture of Memphis soul and Chicago blues, they assembled a large band that included Cropper and Dunn. First appearing on television's Saturday Night Live, the popular sketch led first to an album, Briefcase Full of Blues, then to a movie--in which Cropper and Dunn played themselves--and later a tour and more records. The Blues Brothers version of "Soul Man" allowed Belushi to echo the vocal cue that preceded Cropper's guitar break on the original recording: "Play it, Steve."

Though Belushi died in 1982, Cropper collaborated with Ackroyd on several other Blues Brothers projects in the ensuing years. In his interview with Hetfield, the guitarist characterized the Blues Brothers' repopularization of the Stax sound as "the greatest thing there ever was." Another MG's reunion was scheduled for Atlantic's 1988 40th Anniversary celebration at New York's Madison Square Garden, but Booker T. was too ill and Late Night keyboardist Paul Shaffer, who had helped Belushi and Ackroyd assemble the Blues Brothers band, stepped in.

By 1990, despite periodic reunions, Cropper had become sufficiently obscure to warrant a "what happened to" query in Guitar Player. Cropper reported at the time that he was "having fun getting out there and seeing the world" on tour with other Blues Brothers alumni.

In 1990 Cropper joined British rockers Dave Edmunds and Graham Parker and 1950s rock singer Dion, among others, in a touring "Rock & Roll Revue." Parker expressed to Musician writer Scott Isler his hope that young audiences would appreciate the music bypassed by so-called "classic-rock" radio. "If there is something classic it's Steve Cropper's guitar style," Parker insisted. Indeed, Isler reported, everyone on the tour "is in awe of Steve Cropper." Cropper, who initially resisted going on the tour, recalled, "I said, 'I don't know if I'm your guy. I'm not really a rock 'n' roll guitar player.'" Once on the road, however, he felt grateful to the tour organizers "for talking me into it, 'cause I was really trying to slip out of it." Cropper also did some writing with younger bluesman Robert Cray, who described Cropper to Guitar Player's Hetfield as "a great working partner" who "has these great titles, great potential stories. He leaves you with that, and it just opens you up."

In the early 1990s the MG's reassembled at the Montreaux Jazz Festival and at the Lone Star Roadhouse in New York. In 1991 a boxed set of Stax singles spanning nearly ten years and featuring not only the group's greatest hits but best-known performances by Pickett, Redding, Eddie Floyd, Rufus and Carla Thomas, and many others, won a Grammy Award. At a March 1992 Lone Star show, Shaffer's drummer, Anton Fig, filled in for Jackson. Rolling Stone's Steve Futterman observed, "It was obvious that whatever bond united Jones, Cropper and Dunn in the Sixties still coursed through their veins and that Fig had received a transfusion." The show Futterman reviewed took place one day after the group's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "One day we got a phone call saying, 'You guys are definitely going into the Hall of Fame.' We said, 'What?!' We had been nominated once or twice before and didn't get in, so we figured that we wouldn't get in again," Cropper told Hetfield. "At that point things changed."

The revitalized Booker T. & the MG's played at U.S. President Bill Clinton's 1993 inaugural ball and were the "house band" at the all-star tribute to trailblazing rock songwriter Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden. The group went on tour with Neil Young--with drummer Jim Keltner attempting to fill Al Jackson's shoes--and soon found themselves with a new record deal, this time with Columbia. The result was the 1994 album That's the Way It Should Be. Versatile sidemen Steve Jordan and James Gadson handled drum duties, and the group tackled such varied material as Irish rock group U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and the soul nugget "I Can't Stand the Rain," as well as several originals.

Whatever might happen with the MG's reunion, Cropper had already left an indelible mark on popular music. Long before the profusion of flamboyant, ultra-fast lead guitarists, Cropper had provided an example of economical, generous grooving that would stand the test of time. "I can't play guitar if I'm not playing it from the heart," he insisted to Hetfield. The musician elaborated on his philosophy: "The main idea is not what you play; it's what you don't play. The less you play, the more it means."

In June 2004, Cropper appeared with Dunn and Jones as the backing band for Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival, held at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. Others who appeared included Joe Walsh and David Hidalgo. On June 9, 2005, Cropper was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.He co-produced The Memphis Album (2007), recorded by Australian soul singer Guy Sebastian. Cropper also played guitar on the following promotional tour, which was recorded and released two years later as The Memphis Tour. On March 2, 2008 Cropper and Sebastian were guests on the Vega Sunday Session with host Mark Gable from the rock band the Choirboys.On July 29, 2008, Cropper and Felix Cavaliere released the album Nudge It Up A Notch. In August 2008, Cropper appeared at the Rhythm Festival alongside the Animals.

Cropper was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010 and then released the album Dedicated which was his tribute to the "5" Royales.

Selective Works:
-With Booker T. & the MG's; on Stax/Volt, except where noted Green Onions (includes title track and "Behave Yourself"), 1962.
-Boot-Leg," 1965.
-My Sweet Potato," 1966.
-Hip Hug-Her (includes title track), 1967.
-Back To Back, 1967.
-Doin' Our Thing, 1968.
-Soul Limbo, 1968.
-Up Tight (soundtrack; includes "Time is Tight"), 1969.
-The Booker T. Set, 1969.
-McLemore Avenue, 1970.
-Booker T. & the MG's Greatest Hits, 1970.
-Melting Pot, 1971.
-Union Extended (U.K. only), 1976.
-Universal Language, Asylum, 1977.
-That's the Way It Should Be, Columbia, 1994.
-Solo albums With a Little Help From My Friends, TMI, 1970.
-With the Blues Brothers; on Atlantic Briefcase Full of Blues (includes "Soul Man"), 1978.
-The Blues Brothers (soundtrack), 1980.
-Made in America, 1980.
-With other artists The Complete Stax/Volt Singles, Vol. I: 1959-1968, Atlantic, 1991.
-The Complete Stax/Volt Singles, Vol. 2: 1968-1971, Stax, 1993.
-Also contributed to and/or produced albums by Poco, John Prine, Tower of Power, Jose Feliciano, Paul Shaffer, Jeff Healey, Sammy Hagar, and others."


2. Background from {[http://playitsteve.com/?workprojects=the-whole-story]}
If Yankee Stadium is “the house that Babe Ruth built,” Stax Records is “the house that Booker T, and the MG’s built.” Integral to that potent combination is MG rhythm guitarist extraordinaire Steve Cropper. As a guitarist, A & R man, engineer, producer, songwriting partner of Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd and a dozen others and founding member of both Booker T. and the MG’s and The Mar-Keys, Cropper was literally involved in virtually every record issued by Stax from the fall of 1961 through year end 1970.Such credits assure Cropper of an honored place in the soul music hall of fame. As co-writer of (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay, Knock On Wood and In The Midnight Hour, Cropper is in line for immortality.
Born on October 21, 1941 on a farm near Dora, Missouri, Steve Cropper moved with his family to Memphis at the age of nine. In Missouri he had been exposed to a wealth of country music and little else. In his adopted home, his thirsty ears amply drank of the fountain of Gospel, R & B and nascent Rock and Roll that thundered over the airwaves of both black and white Memphis radio. Bit by the music bug, Cropper acquired his first mail order guitar at the age of 14. Personal guitar heroes included Tal Farlow, Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed, Chet Atkins, Lowman Pauling of the Five Royales and Billy Butler of the Bill Doggett band.

The aspiring musician quickly became buddies with another guitar playing teenager named Charlie Freeman and together the two schoolmates formed a band they dubbed the Royal Spades. A hybrid version of the Spades, renamed The Mar-Keys, wrote and recorded a popping instrumental entitled Last Night in early summer 1961. Released on Satellite Records, the record shot into the Top 5 on both the pop and R & B charts, When a California company also called Satellite Records threatened to sue over use of the name, the Memphis-based Satellite metamorphosized into Stax.
By the time of the Mar-Keys record, Cropper was something of a studio veteran, already having played sessions for Sun, Duke-Peacock and Hi Records. It was only natural, then. that shortly after quitting the Mar-Keys during their first tour, Cropper was given the keys to the Stax studio and became, along with company co-owner Jim Stewart, the label’s de facto A& R man and engineer.
For the next decade Cropper’s career was wed to Stax. Booker T. & the MG’s were born when Cropper, keyboardist Booker T. Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg were hired for a session in late summer 1962 at the then-fledgling Stax Records. When the rockabilly singer the quartet was ostensibly hired to accompany finished early, the four musicians whiled away their time jamming on a blues. Unbeknownst to any of them, Stax co-owner and erstwhile engineer Jim Stewart turned on a tape deck. Satisfied with the results, the four newly constituted band members worked up a second side which came to be known as Green Onions. A dynasty had begun. In 1964 Steinberg left the band and was replaced by Cropper’s high-school friend Donald “Duck” Dunn.
Green Onions became an instrumental anthem for both black and white America, peaking at number One on Billboard’s Rhythm and Blues charts and number three on the pop charts. Mo’ Onions soon followed, as did Soul Dressing, Boot-leg, My Sweet Potato, Hip Hug-Her, Groovin’, Soul Limbo, Hang ‘Em High, Time Is Tight, Mrs. Robinson, Something and Melting Pot.
Booker T. Jones gradually eased his way away from Stax at the turn of the decade. When Cropper, Dunn and Jackson did not follow suit, the MG’s ceased to be an active unit. Cropper himself left the label in the fall of 1970 to start up, with Jerry Williams and former Mar- Key Ronnie Stoots, the Trans-Maximus (TMI) recording studio and record company. In the first half of the 1970s, Cropper produced and played on sessions recorded at TMI or Ardent by the likes of Poco, Jeff Beck, Jose Feliciano, Yvonne Elliman, John Prine, Dreams and Tower Of Power. Later production successes included Tower of Power’s 1978 LP We Came To Play and John Cougar’s 1980 release Nothing Matters And What If It Did.
In 1977, with Stax alumni Willie Hall filling in for the late Al Jackson, the MG’s briefly reunited to record the Universal Language LP for Asylum. Shortly thereafter Cropper and Dunn joined Levon Helm’s RCO All-Stars and then received a call from John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd which resulted in the formation of the Blues Brothers Band. The original incarnation of the Blues Brothers recorded three albums, including the number one Briefcase Full of Blues, and made a hilarious eponymously-titled feature film.
When the Blues Brothers ceased active duty after the passing of Belushi in the spring of 1982, Cropper continued to be in constant demand as both a producer and session guitarist. He also found time to resume his solo career, recording two albums for MCA in 1980 ( Playin’ My Thang) and 1982 ( Night After Night). His first solo album, With a Little Help From My Friends, had been recorded for Stax back in 1969.
In 1997, Steve Cropper and Booker T. and the MG’s career was enshrined in print in Rob Bowman’s, Soulsville U.S.A. : The Story of Stax Records (Schirmer Books). In spring 1998 Fantasy Records issued a three-CD Booker T. and The MG’s box set.
During the whole period of the MG’s glorious renaissance, Cropper has also been busy fulfilling his commitments to The Blues Brothers Band, who have issued two recent CD’s: Live In Montreaux, on WEA International in 1990, and Live From Chicago’s House Of Blues, on the House Of Blues label in 1997.
With John Goodman taking the place of the late John Belushi, The Blues Brothers’ second feature film, Blues Brothers 2000, was released in February 1998.
Cropper also continues to be an in-demand musician and producer. His string-bending talents being most recently showcased on the latest Paul Simon, Ringo Starr, Buddy Guy (Heavy Love) and Johnny Lang (Wander This World) albums. He also contributed his talents to efforts from Elton John and Steppenwolf.
In the producer’s chair, he has most recently piloted Joe Louis Walker’s last three albums: 1995’s The Blues Of The Month Club, 1997’s Great Guitars and Preacher And The President (Verve).
Finally, Croppers multiple talents are routinely called upon for movie soundtracks, such as John Carpenter’s 1998 blockbuster Vampires.
In addition to his commitments to the MG’s and The Blues Brothers, Steve Cropper has started his own label (Play It, Steve! Records), whose inaugural release, entitled Play It, Steve!, was released in February 1998.
Nudge It Up A Notch, featuring Steve Cropper and Felix Cavaliere, was released July 29, 2008, on Stax. It’s such an interesting collaboration that even the record label is synonymous with great R&B. Renowned guitarist and R&B legend Steve Cropper (Booker T & the MGs, the Blues Brothers, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave) and vocal/keyboard legendFelix Cavaliere (leader of The Rascals) convened to create an album of incredible proportions.
Then, in 2010, Cropper and vocalist/keyboardist Felix Cavaliere reconvened for their second collaborative recording. Sparks flew at the crossroads of Memphis soul and East Coast R&B when Stax Records released Midnight Flyer.
In 2011, Cropper was approached by producer Jon Tiven (who he’d previously worked with on the first of his two collaborations with Felix Cavaliere) about collaborating on a tribute album to the 5 Royales, and jumped at the chance. Dedicated: A Salute to the 5 Royales combines the talents of a red hot studio band — Cropper, bassist David Hood, keyboardist Spooner Oldham, percussionist Steve Ferrone, drummer Steve Jordan, and Neal Sugarman and Tiven on horns. In addition, Cropper and Tiven enlisted a stellar group of vocalists to perform 5 Royales standards: Lucinda Williams, Sharon Jones, Bettye LaVette, Delbert McClinton, Willie Jones, B.B. King, Shemekia Copeland, Buddy Miller, Dan Penn, Brian May, Steve Winwood, John Popper, and Dylan LeBlanc, fronting a great cast of backing singers.

Perhaps the ultimate testament to Steve Cropper’s immense contribution to popular music over the last four decades was his ranking by England’s Mojo Magazine in 1996 as the number two guitarist of all-time (Jimi Hendrix was number one). And in 2003, Rolling Stone magazine readers voted him among the Top 100 Guitar Players of all-time.
As impressive as that is, Steve Cropper’s legacy as a solo artist, member of Booker T. and the MG’s and the Blues Brothers, session musician and producer is far from complete. Steve also owns a state-of-the-art recording studio in Nashville called Insomnia Studio. Here’s looking forward to the next few decades.

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Thank you!

Nice share from those days. Great times, not for those in the bush. I was a near teen. Thanks.