Steve Cropper — December 3, 2025

Steve Cropper was the kind of musician whose name might not have been on every album cover, but whose guitar was on songs you have heard a thousand times. As a key member of Booker T. and the M.G.’s, the house band at Memphis’s legendary Stax Records, he helped shape the sound of American soul. He co-wrote “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” with Otis Redding and “In the Midnight Hour” with Wilson Pickett, two songs that still play on classic stations from Maine to California.

Younger boomers and Gen Xers also met him as a member of the Blues Brothers Band, bringing those soul roots to a whole new audience. Known affectionately as “The Colonel,” Cropper continued working with countless artists as a producer and session musician until very late in his life. Steve Cropper passed away at the age of 84, having quietly written the Memphis sound into the bones of American popular music.