RR: You mentioned influences, and I would love to discuss the 5 Royales’ Lowman “Pete” Pauling’s impact on your guitar playing and music.
SC: Now that I look back on it, I have lived to regret that I didn’t reach out and try to find him. It would have been an easy thing for me to do, just find out where he lived and go hop on a plane and go see him. But I never thought anything would come to pass. I never thought I’d be playing this music again. So a friend of mine, Jon Tiven [ Dedicated co-producer along with Cropper] called me one night and said, “I know we’ve talked about you doing a solo record and you’re really not all that into it, but what do you think about doing a tribute to the 5 Royales?” He called me back two hours later and said, “Got it. Got a record company that is interested and they’ll give us a budget to make this record.” And I said, “Oh, man, this is going to be fantastic.”
[Tiven] had read some of my interviews where I had given Lowman Pauling credit for being one of my main influences when I was growing up, which is a true story because we used to play the songs. His style of guitar (when I got to see him live), there were two things that he did—he played rhythm (he had this good shuffling rhythm that he played behind these songs), and he’d do solos on all of them. He’d pick it up and play it; he had this really long strap. The strap that is hanging off my shoulder on the picture on the front [of Dedicated ]—that night that I saw the 5 Royales, I went home and I was looking in my closet for a belt, and my mom said, “Son, what are you doing? It is 12 o’clock at night!” I said, “I’m trying to find a belt.” She said, “What do you need a belt for at this time of night?” I said, “I’m going to make my strap longer.” I got up the next morning, and put two belts together to make this long strap. I put it together with a Gibson strap I had. I played it that way for a long time, so I had that influence, and, also, what he taught me was how he played these little stabs and fills—he’d play more melody than this kind of musical solo stuff. I adapted that and used that flavor on sessions, and the producers and artists loved it—“Oh, man, this is really good. That’s a great lick, Cropper. That’s really cool”—rather than just trying to do solo stuff. It sort of developed itself into a style and I’ve been playing it that way all my life.
RR: Indeed. You have a great quote about how important it is that a guitarist should not smother, or detract from, the singer.
SC: Yeah, it’s true. It’s O.K. to play the same time the singer’s singing if you’re not really covering up the words they’re singing. You have to weave in and out of them, and if they make a great phrase, then you’ve got to answer that phrase with something to complete the melody in the music. That’s a style I had. I noticed that I said “never get in the way of the singer,” and I’m all over the place on this record. But I’m really not on top of them so much; I’m playing along with them, and listening to everything they’re doing.
RR: I’m amazed that that you had so many collaborators on Dedicated, and, yet, the material does not suffer from all the disparate styles because of the sound material. You were able to get those collaborations together fairly quickly, right?
SC: Well, we did. I think the tell tale sign of the first sessions was that most of the singers
that we contacted to be on it said that they would love to be a part of it and that they wanted to be on there at the session. They requested that, not us. That’s what was amazing to me—“What are the dates of the sessions? We want to be there to sing live with the band,” and we went, “Wow.” (laughs) Nobody ever does that anymore; it’s just not something you do. Bettye LaVette said, “I’ve got to be there. I want to be there.” Her and Willie [Jones] came in and did [“Don’t Be Ashamed” and “Say It”], Delbert McClinton came in [“Right Around the Corner”], Dylan Leblanc came in [with Sharon Jones on “Come On & Save Me”], and Buddy Miller came in [“The Slummer the Slum”].
Some of the people couldn’t be there. It was a long time before we got a date for B.B. King to perform because he works all the time. He’s always doing something. He finally gave us this date, and I think it was the last track that we overdubbed anything on out where he lives [“Baby Don’t Do It” with Shemekia Copeland].
RR: And it’s a beautiful performance, too.
SC: Unbelievable. You talk about having a highlight in your life, to be sitting in a studio, or standing there, and we put a microphone, short mike, on the coffee table, and B.B.’s sitting on the couch, and they had a guy go out and tune his guitar. We brought a long chord in and he sat on the couch playing his guitar and sang. (laughs) Playing over the speakers in the control room—it was phenomenal. I mean everything he did was unbelievable. It’s too bad we couldn’t put all of it on there. (laughs) We had to edit it down and come up with his final licks, but it was phenomenal. He was so relaxed. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen B.B. live, and I’ve played on the same shows with B.B. for years, and I’ve gone up and sat in with B.B., and I’m involved a little bit in the B.B. King Club, so whenever he’s doing a performance or a birthday or whatever, I’ll go in and try to be there to see him play. We’ve been friends for a long, long time, so to have him do that was just phenomenal. We had to travel some for some of the other artists, but the main thing was that when we first cut the tracks, we had several there at the same time we played, and that’s the best way in the world to make records.
RR: Sharon Jones wedded with your guitar on “Messin’ Up” went down very well.
SC: Yeah, that’s pretty cool. She sent a message back to Jon Tiven that she really liked the fills that I did on a song that she does, so she was really digging me.
RR: You also got Lucinda Williams.
SC: (laughs) That’s a good one. That was Jon Tiven’s idea [“Dedicated to the One I Love” with Dan Penn and “When I Get Like This”], and I felt very honored that she agreed to it at all. It was just awesome.
RR: And Buddy Miller has to be a neighbor, right?
SC: I don’t really know, but he’s got to be because we’re ten minutes from everywhere. (laughs) If he lives in Nashville, we’re close, yeah. I’ve done a few sessions with him. He’s just a great guy, I know some of his music and productions, and we had a ball the first time we got together. I really didn’t know that much about him. I just knew the name. We played on an album together and we hit it off. He’s really good friends with Jon Tiven and Jon called him and he said, “Absolutely. I’ll be more than happy.” He’s been out on the road with Robert Plant and doing that thing, so he’s a workaholic, too.
RR: After all of this time, and through all the careers that we spoke of in the beginning of our conversation, how do you maintain such consistency in your playing without entering into a stale region?
SC: I don’t know. It’s just sort of natural what I do. Each one of these songs [on Dedicated ]…you know, I hadn’t played these songs since, golly, late 50s, early 60s, so (laughter) to me, it’s fresh music, too. Any time you’ve got a new song, or even if you’re playing an old song that you’ve known for years, you kinda want to give it a fresh approach and you don’t want to play it exactly note for note that it was originally, or the way that people remember it from a long time ago. I did that with all of them, and I remember Jon Tiven, when we first got into this…I was really bent on being precise with the licks that Lowman played, and he said, “Well, it’s O.K. on some of those songs that are important (like there are certain licks on Dedicated the way a phrase goes), but, mainly, we want you to be you—play like Steve Cropper; play like you always play.” There are parts of me where, you know (laughs), I don’t know, I just feel it. I play by ear anyway; I don’t play by what’s written. I play outside the box. Let’s put it that way.
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