HE’S THE MAN WITH THE MAGIC TOUCH, THE TELE-WIELDING GROOVE MASTER WHOSE SIGNATURE STYLE SHAPED THE SOUND OF SOUL MUSIC FROM GREEN ONIONSTO THE BLUES BROTHERS AND BE YOND, AND WHOSE FANS INCLUDED THE BEATLES. “RHY THM IS MY THING,” SAYS SOUL SURVIVOR STEVE CROPPER. “I LIKE TO GET PEOPLE DANCING AND ROCKING...”

Words Grant Moon Photos Michael Wilson

Asa member of Booker T & The MG’s, the man they call The Colonel helped define the classic 60s ‘Memphis Soul’ sound. His oft-imitated Telecaster sound powers countless hits on the legendary Stax label, he co-wrote classic tunes including Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay with Otis Redding and In The Midnight Hour with Wilson Pickett, and as a producer and player went on to work with greats such as John Lennon, Jeff Beck, John Prine and Rod Stewart. Now 79, Cropper’s back with new album Fire It Up, and offers TG a few pearls of wisdom gleaned from nearly six decades at the top...

Keep it simple, and play what you feel.

When I do a project, I try to keep everything as simple as possible, and it’s the same when I write. I try to keep it as close to ‘a long time ago’ as I can, too. Usually I’m playing single notes or two strings at a time. On [Sam & Dave’s] Soul Man, I just play those first two notes and the audience gets it immediately – they know what song’s coming. Sure it’s simple, but it’s got an identity. I always go back to what [Stax producer/engineer] Chips Moman told me to do. I said, ‘Chip I’ve got all these sessions to play on, what do I do?’ He said, ‘Just play what you feel, if they don’t like it they’ll tell ya!’ They liked it, so I continued on. These days if I’m playing [lead] on somebody else’s music, they set the groove and I just I play by ear to what I’m hearing. That’s what I’ve always done.

Reading music is useful (to a point...)

I used to read band charts real quick but I haven’t done it in years. At Stax we were lucky, we got successful with our own hit records so we didn’t have to learn a lot of other people’s music, we just kept playing our own. But it can be good to have a sheet [music chart], even when overdubbing solo licks and fills. I like to have that to think what I would do off of the chord changes. It all depends – for some songs you know the key, so you go to that position on the neck where you play those solo licks in that key. For other songs, like Soul Man and Dock Of The Bay, you like to follow the changes when you’re playing the licks. Going back to some of the early jingle sessions I did, I’d be sitting in a room with 40 or 50 other musicians – string players, timpanists – and I’d open up the guitar music and it’d just be one giant clef in the middle of the paper where they’d written, ‘Play it Steve!’ I got a kick out of that, and so did the session musicians. I think they realised after a while that I wasn’t reading what they’d written for me, I’d just play what I was gonna play no matter what!