Memphis, Tennessee is the epicenter of American music. The songs that define both blues and rock’ n’ roll were created in Memphis, and most of them were either co-written by or feature Steve Cropper’s guitar playing. Cropper was the guitarist for Stax Records house band Booker T. & the M.G.’s and was involved with songs like “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay”, “Soul Man”, “Knock on Wood”, “In the Midnight Hour”, and many others. His band, Steve Cropper & The Midnight Hour will release their second record Friendlytown on August 30 and Steve recently took some time to talk about it.
Please press the PLAY icon below to listen to the MisplacedStraws Steve Cropper interview –
On how Billy Gibbons joined Steve Cropper & The Midnight Hour – Real short, we’ve been friends, Billy and I have been friends for years, let’s put it that way. So he runs, or Jon Tiven, who co-produced the album, runs into Billy. I don’t know where it was. He would know. Tiven would know where he ran into Billy. It was either Costco or some grocery store or something. He said, “What are you getting ready to do?” He said, “What are you doing now?” He said, “Well, I’m not doing anything right now”. But he said, “I’m getting ready to do a record on Steve Cropper”. And Billy says, “Oh, wow, man. Can I be on it?” “Hell yeah, you do”. So he’ll write two of the songs. He was on the album. But he was on tour when we did the tracks. Two of them he wrote with us at Jon’s house. Two of them. I think we did all of the tracks in one or two days, I can’t remember, one or two days for the album. That was Billy’s idea of “Friendlytown”, and he had another one that was his as well.
So, that’s how Billy got there. Same thing with Brian May. So Jon Tiven and Brian have been friends for years, sort of like Duck and I. They’ve been friends for years. So I asked Jon, I said, “Have you heard from, how’s this song going on with Brian May?” He said, “Well, I hadn’t heard from him, I’ll call him”. So he calls Brian and says, “Oh man, I got to, I must admit I’m a little behind here”. He says, “I must apologize, too much stress”. And Jon says, “Man, that’s your song right there”. And he said, “Okay”. And I think before the week was out, we had, he had the song done and we added it to the album.
So Jon said, “Well, we’ll do the song”. I said, “I don’t know”. Put it as a single. Put it out. He did. It’s out there now as you all know. It’s doing quite well. For those who don’t know, Brian May is in Queen. For those who don’t know. They know he just came with a great movie that they had, Freddie Mercury.
On if he’s inspired by the other guests on the record – Tim Montana’s on there. Felix Cavallari’s on there. Different times. They’re just friends. They’ll be just musicians from now on. So Tim Montana is a real good friend. He came to a costume party at my house one time as me and we hit it right off the bat. He’s from, you can’t tell where Tim Montana’s from. Tim Montana is from Montana, I guess. He lived here for a while, but he now has a club, a casino, and everything up in Montana that he bought. So he went back. He’s up there now, but he still comes in and out. He’s one of Billy Gibbons’ best friends. I would say Billy and he just hit off. Billy doesn’t have a lot of friends. He’s got me. He’s got Jon. He’s got Tim Montana. Tim came in and played his butt off on that album, and so it was pretty cool.
I was talking in the middle, talking about Eddie Gore. Eddie Gore plays some of the organ parts. He also was an engineer on it, and mixed it. So, he and I mixed the last album, and he mixed this album by himself. He didn’t need my help. So he didn’t need my ear on this one. It is a great album. I listened to it several times. It’s real good. Most of them, I just play albums up until the day I finished them. I played a hundred times before I finished. When I signed off on it, I never heard it again in most cases unless it’s on the radio. I don’t sit down and listen to albums like I used to, like the old days. I never did. I always listened to the top 40. That was my chief competitor, was the top 40. Yeah, top 10 or top 40, whatever, whatever the radio was playing. That’s was my chief competitor. So I was never an album collector, never an instrument collector.
On if the songs he wrote in the Stax days were for specific artists or if the label decided who got the song – Well, it depended. In most cases, we, custom-made those songs for the artist. A lot of times we didn’t. So I think, “634-5789” was definitely written for Wilson (Pickett), who was coming in. We picked Wilson at about a week before, maybe the night before we did a demo, the night before he came in. The next day, we take him straight to the studio from the airport and we played it for him. About halfway through playing it, he wads it up, and I see it across my face. I see a wad of paper going across, and I said, “Oh no, he hates the song”. The next thing I know, Eddie (Floyd), there’s a big, big, big, big guy flying across, flying tackle. So, there’s two big guys wrestling around each other on the floor. I said, “Oh no, that’s called off until tomorrow”. Well, it wasn’t called off. So, when they get to wrestling, I didn’t know they were in the same group. We used to do this all the time. So Eddie says, “I’m going to take Wilson to the hotel”, Wilson calls me after he gets there, he says, “what time are you arriving tonight?” I said, “oh, it’s back on again. Okay”.
So as I’m pulling in the rain, Eddie’s up there, and I pull in and I see an ad for Coke is on the side, it says, “Ninety-nine and a half won’t do, Coke is 100 percent” or something like that. So I’m in business now, 40 years later. So anyway, I went in, I told them about “ninety-nine and a half just won’t do”, there it is. We wrote that song. We’ll cut “634-5789” and “Ninety-nine and a Half”. The next day, two number songs. So I don’t know if it was custom made or not. “Ninety-Nine and a half” was because Wilson wrote it.
“Midnight Hour” was custom made and “Don’t Fight It”. “You got to feel it. There you sit all by yourself”. I think that was the one that Wilson came down with that he wrote. And I wrote with him, “I’m Not Tired”. “I’ve been loving you a long, long time and I’m not tired”. We actually talk about Jesus, but we turn it into a guy telling this to his girlfriend. I said, “If God doesn’t like it, he’ll hit me with a lighter or something, he’ll let me know. One way or the other, if he doesn’t like it”, he never has. God likes anything that I know of. I’ve done pretty good so far. So, maybe he’s tripping me now. I’ve called him about three or four or five times in the last two years or so. Maybe he’s just tripping me. I always thought it was my mom. Maybe it’s God tripping me. Maybe he’s making me pay for all that.
On if the band or Stax ever felt pressure from the Memphis community for being integrated – No. Let me tell you about Stax. There was no color Stax. The drummer Willie Hall said the same thing. He said, “Whatever Steve just said is the truth”. There was no color Stax. When you walked through the doors of Stax, it was better than walking in a church. It was just a bunch of musicians making music. That’s all. We never did look at each other different from each other. Anything outside was, I guess you went back to normal life outside, but on the inside of Stax, there was no color and they all want to play the race card or whatever they play. Every journalist I’ve ever known, everybody always asked about that. And we never did. We didn’t think about it until after Martin Luther King got killed. Then we started thinking about some, maybe there’s black and white brothers.
I always called Memphis. The most segregated city in the South. I said, I never felt that, never did feel that. You know, we did our thing, they did their thing. When I say we and they, well it was different down in the West End. Now it’s all sorts of stuff. They’re just trying their damnedest to separate everybody, that’s bullshit. I think it is. And we’re still musicians, we’re musicians. You’re a musician, you’re a musician. Doesn’t matter what color you are, you can be any color. Red, yellow, green. It doesn’t matter if you’re a musician, you’re a musician and you play your butt off. You try to impress everybody else by your playing.
On if he and Booker T would ever get together one last time – There’s a possibility, I doubt it. Same thing as the Beatles. I doubt it. I mean, why would, there’s a possibility, but they’re all doing their own thing. I did talk to Booker about a year and a half ago, and I said, “If we went on tour together now, it’d be Booker T and MG, everybody else is gone”. There’s only two guys left of the original band, Don Nix, I meant to call him yesterday, I didn’t, or today, and I didn’t, I hadn’t called him yet, I gotta call him as soon as I hang up. So Don Nix and myself are the only two guys left of the original band, The Mar-Keys. Booker and I, the only two guys left of the Booker T and the MGs.
On if he feels there is one song he wrote that is the essence of Steve Cropper – No, not really. I don’t think so. There’s two guitar things that I really like. One is called “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”, an older, and the other is (unintelligable), I think I’ve tuned down to a D. To the tune the guitar down and start playing and that’s what folks do most years he was tuned to D, that’s why most of them you can’t play you try to play it and do this You can’t play the songs and written in D in D unless you’re tuned down to it. That’s weird.
On if he plans on touring for Friendlytown – Well, I hope to. Hope to. I don’t know. We’ll have to see. The last time was COVID, we couldn’t do it. This time we can, but I can’t play anymore like I used to. I can’t play like a teenager or in my 20s. I can’t do it. So they say, “Why can you not entertain us?” Because I fallen too many times. I don’t know. My brain still works, but my hands don’t do what my brain tells us to do. In the old days, my brain would think of something and just play it.
On his memories of The Blues Brothers – I got a memory of all of them, especially John (Belushi), but some of the others I don’t have to have a memory. They’re all alive. So John is the only one I know of that’s gone from the original band. Duck (Dunn)’s is the only one I know of that’s gone besides John. So, Ducks is gone. My, my good buddy, Duck Dunn. When I think about that, Ducks is the one. So, I think John went to Duck’s and said, “What’s Cropper doing?” He said, “Well, he’s working on an album”. So, he called me and I was in the middle of doing Robbin Ford, I think it is. I hung up on John twice. The third time he called back, he said, “Don’t hang up. It really is John Belushi. Don’t hang up, Steve. Don’t hang up”. I said, “OK. I thought it was a buddy of mine that he always called some stupid names, you know, like the president or some stupid name, Stevie Wonder or the president or something”. But I thought it was him. My buddy wanted to go to lunch because I would tell the girl, “Don’t disturb me unless it’s real important. If I’m mixing or cutting, don’t, don’t, don’t call back”. They don’t. I said, Oh, I’ll come out and then it’d be plenty of time to do that. So I thought it was, that’s why I hung up.
So Robbin Ford, we were mixing his new, his latest album. And Robbin was down on the couch sampling. He wanted to hear it. He stood up and said, “I’ll do it”. And I said, “No, you won’t. I’ll do it”. So I called John back. I said, first, I talked to Bruce, who was an engineer at the time, Bruce Robb at Cherokee. And I said, “Bruce, can you mix the two?” He said, yeah. I said, “Just send it to me and I’ll prove it or not disprove it, no problem”. So I called John back and I said, “John, I can’t get up here today, but you wait a couple of days. I said, I’ll be at their door”. So Duck called me, caught me coming out the elevator. They took me from LaGuardia straight to the A& R, to the rehearsal, where the band was.
They were already rehearsing. So Duck said, “Dan, you got to go in there and do something”. They’re doing a bunch of old blues songs nobody ever heard of. Well, Duck hadn’t heard of him. I said, “Duck, don’t let me go in there now and do anything. Let me hear it first. Let me get to rehearsal”. So after rehearsal, I looked at John and said, “John, can you do something people can dance to?” He said, “Absolutely. What do you think?” And I said, well, he said, “Like what?” I said, “Like Sam and Dave”. He said, okay. So I looked at Paul Shaffer and I said, “Paul, do you know “Soul Man”, he said, “Absolutely”. So I cut down on “Soul Man”. Everybody fell in. It’s pretty cool. Danny (Aykroyd) comes out of the back with that crazy leg thing he does. Danny can’t dance worth a damn, but he was doing that crazy. He gave all the guys that can’t dance a reason to be somebody. So they go out and do crazy leg stuff, crazy stuff on stage dancing. They’re just imitating Dan Aykroyd. Everybody says, “Yeah, man, that’s great. You’re doing a real good job”. So it is. So John, at the end, he’s wiping the sweat off. He says, “Man, that was great, but it’s too high. I can’t sing it.” I said, “OK”. I just dropped it down to E, down to fourth, from G to E. We’ve been playing E ever since.
