By Brad Brooks
Dec 3 (Reuters) – Steve Cropper, a storied guitarist, songwriter and producer who helped define the Southern soul sound at legendary Memphis music label Stax Records, died on Wednesday in Nashville, according to a post on his social media accounts. He was 84. No cause of death was cited.
Cropper was the lead guitarist for Rock & Roll Hall of Fame group Booker T. and the MG’s, whose biggest hit was the 1962 single “Green Onions.” He also played with many other legendary R&B figures, from Otis Redding to B.B. King to Wilson Pickett.
“While we mourn the loss of a husband, father, and friend, we find comfort knowing that Steve will live forever through his music,” the post on his social media read.
As a songwriter, Cropper had co-writer credits on genre-defining hits such as “In the Midnight Hour” and “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” and he was famed for his guitar playing on the hit “Soul Man.” Cropper was a two-time Grammy Award winner and an inductee into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Cropper’s website states that he “was literally involved in virtually every record issued by Stax from the fall of 1961 through year end 1970.”
Cropper reached new fame in the late 1970s when he worked with the Blues Brothers, the musical side project of comedians John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, and appeared in “The Blues Brothers” film starring all three.
Born on October 21, 1941, on a farm near Dora, Missouri, Cropper moved with his family to Memphis at the age of nine. He bought his first mail-order guitar at age 14, and quickly formed a band with friends. His website lists Chuck Berry and Chet Atkins among his earliest guitar heroes.
“Somebody asked me one time about how’d you learn how to play guitar. I said: ‘Jesus, it’s really easy. You just learn one note that’s all you gotta do, and then you learn to play it in different places,'” Cropper said in 2014 at a rock ‘n roll exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto.
Cropper is survived by his wife, Angel, along with his children Andrea, Cameron, Stevie and Ashley.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by Sonali Paul)
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