Steve Cropper has “lived long enough to have a past,” according to the legendary guitarist who has helmed a five-decade stand with Booker T. & the M.G.s, Otis Redding, and the Blues Brothers to name just a few in his long, storied, and historic career. Indeed, as Jambands.com sat down with the larger than life musician, he was coming off a series of short interviews that had somehow encapsulated a lifetime’s worth of experiences into small pockets of time. We got lucky as Cropper decided to stretch out because, at this point, as he sagely said, “if someone asks me a question, it’s gonna take a while. You can’t knock that out in ten minutes; it’s just not going to happen.”
So Cropper stretched out and took his time in our conversation, which is both fortuitous and ironic considering the six-string icon is noted for being succinct and precise with his music. Truly, one can not think of a musician who can cover so much creative ground with so few notes, as Cropper has long since mastered the art of ‘less is more’ within a creative idiom which can often seem self-indulgent. The guitarist is clearly not that way, even after his long career of highlights. On Dedicated, Cropper pays tribute to his biggest influence, guitarist Lowman “Pete” Pauling of the seminal R&B group The 5 Royales. The 15-track release features the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame artist, Steve “The Colonel” Cropper, and an entire squadron of elite guests including Steve Winwood, B.B. King, John Popper, Sharon Jones, Buddy Miller, Bettye LaVette, Brian May, Lucinda Williams, and Dan Penn covering the 5 Royales music, which influenced Cropper, who in turn went on to inspire the generations of musicians who followed in his wake.
RR: You have said that you have four or five careers. Define that for me.
SC: Career wise, you’ve gotta be talking about the Mar-Keys, then you’ve gotta be talkin’ about Booker T. & the M.G.s, and then you’ve gotta be talkin’ about the Blues Brothers, and then, I would say, the next part about it was that the Blues Brothers were all encompassed into one when you’re talking about Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, the movie, and what we did right afterwards. Then, that happened. Now, you’ve got the original Blues Brothers band that’s been touring, and this year will be 23 years in a row. That was a whole other entity in itself. The fact that we went out and promoted ourselves as the original Blues Brothers band, which means it’s not about Jake and Elwood, we play music from all the films, a song from this, a song from that, as we had four records, we had two movies, (laughs) we had our own record that we did, so we tried to hit and miss little bits of the pieces. We’ve had Eddie Floyd with us for 21 years, and so, it’s sort of the Blues Brothers at the beginning, and then, it turns into a Stax show (laughs), and then, we kind of finalé it a little bit with stuff like “Soul Man” that Jake and Elwood would have done, and that’s the show and everybody gets off on it. That would be my four careers and not including the one I had in high school. (laughs)
RR: Let’s talk about how you have stood the test of time by going back to your origins. What was Duck Dunn’s part in introducing you to the music which you celebrate on your new album, Dedicated: A Salute to the 5 Royales ?
SC: We had a band that played all the time, the Mar-Keys, and we came right out of high school. We had already been doing a lot of proms and all of that. When we graduated from high school, some of us went to college, and some of us didn’t. But, fortunately for me, I was still in town; I went to Memphis State. I didn’t live Memphis, I still was there, and I was there on purpose because I wanted to be close to that band. I wasn’t about to give up that band, or lose it, or leave it.
We worked at different clubs. I remember there was one called Neal’s Hideaway that we worked at for nine months, and I was going to Memphis State at the time. I would get out of school on Tuesdays and Thursdays at about 12:30, and on Monday and Wednesday and Friday, I’d get out about 1:30. I would leave there, go home, change clothes, and go to the grocery store that I worked at. I worked different jobs. I started out as a sacker there, then I managed one section where they checked in the bottles, and I sold cigarettes and did whatever. They would let me get off work at 9, sometimes about five ‘til, because the manager knew that I was on stage. I would drive to Middleton, Tennessee, and I’d be on stage for the second set. I’d get off stage at 3:45 in the morning (laughs), and I’d head home, get a couple of hours of sleep, get up, grab a book or two, and I’d be in class by 7:30 in the morning. And I did that for a long time.
Duck was the bassist in the band, and this one particular club we played was called the Tropicana, and they had the 5 Royales comin’ to town. Duck and I had always been big fans of the 5 Royales. His brother worked for King Record Distributors, and they got all these King Records in, and so we started listening to Earl Bostic, James Brown, you name it, and the 5 Royales. We listened to that, and oh man, we just loved that kind of music, so we did a few of those songs live all the time—“Think,” “Say It,” “Dedicated to the One I Love.” They came to town. And the club we were playing at—the Beverly Ballroom—they were going to play upstairs from where we were playing. They weren’t going to open the small club that night because they knew nobody’d be there and everybody would be upstairs at this big event. So we talked to the owner and asked, “Can you get us in to see the 5 Royales?” And he said, “I don’t know if I can do that; you guys are not old enough to go up there.” (laughter) We weren’t old enough to be downstairs, either, but we were there. Duck and I were still 20 years old; we hadn’t turned 21 yet, so you’re not supposed to go to where they sell liquor and stuff and not be 21.
[The club owner] said, “Let me see what I can do,” so we came down there on that night, and he snuck us in the back door. We got to see the 5 Royales. We didn’t get to meet ‘em, or talk to them, or any of that, but we got to see them perform, and it was just a great educational night to see these guys singing and playing and the guitar player, Lowman Pauling just blew us away. Duck was influenced by the bass player, as well. He’s got a few stories about that, but it was really awesome that we got to see those guys live, and they were idols of ours and there we were getting to see it. That was real rare in Memphis, Tennessee. If you wanted to see somebody downtown like Little Richard or Bo
Diddley, it cost a lot of money, so (laughs) that’s something we didn’t have in those days, and we missed out on a lot of the live acts that came to Memphis.
Now, one thing we used to do was that if Ray Charles was playing a place like the Hippodrome downtown, we’d get in the car, and drive down Beale Street real slow with the windows down. (laughter) It’s a true story. We’d drive by real slow with the windows down, and see if we could hear music through the walls. We were a band that loved to play dance music, and those guys, like Ray Charles and James Brown, played great dance music. One of the groups that I was told—and I don’t know if they were influenced—were kind of in competition with the 5 Royales was Hank Ballard & the Midnighters. And, as you know, they came up with the song, “The Twist,” and I read a story somewhere that they got booked in the same town where the 5 Royales were from (laughs), and they sort of got booed off the stage because there were the 5 Royales.
We had to do that one time in Kansas City. This is when Booker T.—Booker T. Jones—was going to college. He still liked to play and work, so on weekends, he had this little band that he would play with, so there was a booking agent out in Memphis called Ray Brown, and he booked Booker T. and the M.G.s, and we did a lot of shows for him, and then Booker went off to college, so we didn’t work much. Well, [Brown] called and said, “I’ve got this great gig in Kansas City, Missouri,” and we said, “We’ll have to call Booker. He’s in college, and maybe he’ll drive over somehow, or fly over, or whatever we’ve got to do.” It was a really good paying gig, so we called Booker, and Booker said, “Well, I’m already booked.” We said, “Man, get out of your gig; we’ve got a great gig in Kansas City.” He said, “No, I can’t get out of it; I’m locked, I’m booked.”
The next morning, Duck and I were walking around the studio saying, “I can’t believe we can’t do this gig in Kansas City next weekend.” I think Al Jackson [Jr., drums] said, “Why don’t we take Isaac Hayes?” And, so, O.K., we went and got Isaac: “Isaac, we’ve got this great gig next weekend in Kansas City. Can you come and play with us and do Booker T.’s stuff?” And he said, “Yeah, man, that’ll be a lot of fun.” Off we go, and we set up and we’re there and nobody knows who Booker is and all of that, and we’re playing a theatre downtown in Kansas City, and we’re on stage, and we’re playing “Green Onions”—we always opened with “Green Onions,” so everybody knew who we were—and we started playing some other stuff, and about the second song some girl jumped up and said, “You’re not Booker T.!” (laughter) Isaac Hayes is up behind the organ, and I don’t know what good that would do because there were people up in the high balcony that could see. So for the next thirty minutes he played while hiding behind the organ. “He ain’t no Booker T.!”
Maybe she was from Memphis and knew Booker. I had no idea. It sent a shockwave across the stage. We’d get in trouble like that every now and then.
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.
RR: Speaking of “play like Steve Cropper,” you did include a couple of instrumentals on the record, too.
SC: Basically, those came about because we didn’t have a singer for them. With “Think,” we played the 5 Royales version, but I remember the James Brown version, so it was Jon Tevin’s idea to keep it instrumental: “Let’s do James’ version and do it instrumental,” and we got Steve Jordan [drums] on the session, and he just fell right into that. There’s an outtake where Jordan and I got into another groove and they didn’t roll the tape on it (laughs), and they said, “Man, you almost played a hit, but we don’t know what you call it.” Obviously, all the songs on this album are all 5 Royales songs, so there was no room for new music, but I said, “We’ll get around to that sometime.” The other song that we didn’t know was going to be an instrumental was the one that Dan Penn sings, “Someone Made You For Me.” Jon Tiven, being in the control room, had the lyrics laying there on the console, and was flipping over to the next song we were going to do with the music and all that, and he said, “Next, we’re going to do “Someone Made You For Me,” but we didn’t have a singer. So, we’re out talking and Dan Penn goes in and said, “Well, who is going to sing on this one?” Jon said, “Well, we don’t have anybody. We’re just going to cut the track, and Steve is going to open up the melody and make it an instrumental.” [Penn] said, “Mind if I take a shot at this?” (laughter) We hadn’t asked Dan to sing, not
because we didn’t expect that he would do it. He offered on his own. He said, “Do you mind that we go ahead and finish the session, and I’ll get back in here, either tonight, or early in the morning, and I’ll play you what I do tomorrow when you come back in.”
And so he did, and there he is: “Someone Made You For Me.” And that’s one of my favorite songs that they ever did, and it has incredible lyrics. It’s funny when Dan said, “We can’t let those lyrics go unsung. Those are great lyrics.” He’s right.
RR: I also loved John Popper’s vocals and harp work on “My Sugar Sugar.”
SC: Yeah, we play that one in the car all the time, and it’s one of my wife’s favorites. She brags about it. He just did such a great job on that song.
RR: There is a particularly fine chemistry between you two on that track.
SC: Yeah, he’s a great guy and I’ve known him for a long time. A lot of people don’t know, or have even seen or watched Blues Brothers 2000, but John Popper had a little scene in that movie, and that’s where we became friends, and he played the House of Blues with us one night. He’s a great guy—a great singer and a great talent.
RR: Did you use the Peavey and the Telecaster on Dedicated ?
SC: Actually, both. I used the custom Peavey that I’ve got that was made for my, I don’t know, 55th birthday or something. I’ve played the Peavey for about 14 years, and I have one out called the Cropper Classic, which I guess we’ve had out on the market for about seven years. I’ve got some that I’ve played on a few things, but my regular road guitar is the original Peavey that was made by Jim DeLuca. He left Peavey and went to Fender. For the tracking day, I think for the second day, I brought my favorite Telecaster that I have. I think I got that one out of the plant in La Brea, California when I lived out there, and most of the engineers really liked that, so I said, “O.K., I’m going to try that again.”
For “Someone Made You For Me,” I got out my old Gibson Switchmaster ES-5, and played that on the rhythm guitar—good ole chunk and bend-type rhythm, big band rhythm. I think for the solo, I pulled out my Howard Roberts Fusion guitar. That guitar is awesome. (laughs) It’s pretty cool. Those things, I don’t take on the road. I don’t carry but one guitar on the road, and I have it on my shoulder. That’s the way I go with it, instead of like these guys who bring a box full of guitars, and they’re all up there, and they play a different song on every song. I don’t have time for all of that. (laughter) I admire the guys who do it, and I have nothing against it, but it’s just something I don’t do. I don’t have a lot of foot switches, either. I don’t have a pedal board under my feet. I can walk around stage without tripping over anything. The other guitar player has pedals, and I trip over his pedals. (laughter)
RR: How will you tour Dedicated ?
SC: The problem is, this year, I’m already booked, and most of that stuff was booked before we even talked about doing an album. That was all setup last year. I hope the record will stick around long enough and be good enough to something other than just television where we can actually do some shows, other than the one we did in New York at the Lincoln Center with the Bar-Kays and the North Mississippi Allstars.
RR: The music industry has changed dramatically over the 50 years you have been in the business. When you enter a studio, has your recording methods changed in any way, or do you still use the same style you’ve always had?
SC: (laughs) Well, yeah, I know what we want. When I go to another studio with another engineer, I just setup my amp with my sound. If it’s way out of line, I may say something, and if it’s not, I’ll just stay quiet and don’t say anything. In my studio, we get the sound that I want, that I’ve been doing forever, so not much has changed. We recorded the tracks in Dan Penn’s studio [Better Songs & Gardens] in his house not too far from here, maybe five minutes from my house. I recorded there before, and Dan gets that old sound, a Memphis sound. He has an analog ear, even though he’s cutting some stuff digitally. He knows what it’s supposed to sound like, and he got us a great sound on this record. We mixed some of it in my studio, and some of it in another studio. We were not there for every mix, but we were there to O.K. them, tweak them, and do whatever we wanted to do with them. I think we arrived at a sound that…Jon Tiven and I are old blues guys, and we kind of know what we want and we know what we want to get out of something, and I think we came pretty close.
The first song on the album, “Thirty Second Lover,” with Steve Winwood—I figured he’s the only guy that I would have asked that would have said, “Well, I’m just too tied up,” not that he would refuse me because we’ve been dear friends for a long, long time. I had the feeling that if he could do it, he would do it. He said, “Yeah, I’ll give that a shot,” (laughs) and he took the track with him and said, “I’m going to have to get back.” He wouldn’t have time to do it here, but he said, “When I get home, I’ll look at it and I’ll try to do a vocal on it and send it to you.” God bless him, he did, and it’s just awesome.
And my good buddy who lives right around the corner from me, Delbert McClinton? How good is he? [McClinton, appropriately enough, appears on “Right Around the Corner” on Dedicated.] He’s on my original notepad. We took a list of songs, and put out beside it: “Who is on our wish list?” So, Jon and I both had a wish list, and we got together a few days later and compared the wish lists. I got [McClinton] to do “Right Around the Corner,” and I could just hear that voice doing that song. He came in here, and we knocked that out in about 15 minutes, so it was awesome.
RR: Queen’s Brian May was on one of those wish lists?
SC: Jon Tiven came up with that idea. I didn’t know it. He said, “Yeah, I talked to Brian May, and he really wants to be on the album.” I said, “Are you serious ?” (laughter) I didn’t believe him. I mean, I believed him because he wouldn’t be lying to me, but I couldn’t believe [May] would do that, and he did. He just did a great job. We weren’t there for the recording of [“I Do”]. We cut the track, and he overdubbed. He’s so tight and incredible that it is just amazing. That whole thing that he puts on the end is so Queenish. (laughs) He’s cool.
RR: I’m a little surprised that you don’t believe people wouldn’t jump at the chance to work with you, Steve.
SC: (laughs) I feel very honored and I’m very lucky to be around to witness all this stuff. It’s something else. I hope to meet you someday. Just come backstage if I’m ever around.
