Listen to Cropper's "Dedicated to the One I Love," from Dedicated:
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Shaking Steve Cropper’s hand is more
than an honor. It’s a bit of a revelation.
His hands are massive, less like a guitarist’s
than those of a dockworker from a time
when “the Memphis sound” was chiefly
Mississippi River boat traffic. Even in the
photo displayed at the top of his website
(
playitsteve.com), his left mitt swallows up
the first four or five frets on the neck of his
signature Peavey solidbody.
Knowing this doesn’t make it any easier
to cop ideas from Cropper’s fretting hand,
but that’s not where the mystery lies anyway.
This era-shaping guitarist wrote his
name in the history books with the percussive
qualities of a sharp pick attack and
simple, supportive musical ideas. When
the prestigious British music magazine
MOJO named him the No. 2 rock guitar
player in history after Jimi Hendrix, it
was a ringing endorsement of the principle
that taste and timing are every bit as
important to the greatness of a record as
fretboard fireworks.
Cropper was born in rural Missouri, but
fate took a musically fortuitous turn when
his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee,
when the future legend was just 10 years
old. This put him in the middle of perhaps
the most musically fermented place in
America at the very dawn of rock and roll.
When Cropper was old enough to dive in,
he did so at a dynamic time—when music
made it from the ramshackle studios to
radios and then to the radio charts with
stunning speed. His first band of note, the
Mar-Keys, turned a loose recording session
into a Top 5 nation-wide hit with the
timeless instrumental classic “Last Night.”
Cropper was just 19 years old.

An autographed promotional glossy showing Cropper in the Stax studio with his famous Tele. “The lacquered
blonde necks are too glassy for me, too wiry. They might have worked live, but I didn’t play live onstage a lot,
so I always liked that deader sound from the rosewood fretboard.” Photo courtesy of the Stax Museum of
American Soul Music
Satellite Records, the fledgling label that
released “Last Night,” would change its
name to Stax—and that is, of course, where
Cropper truly made his name. Not only
was he the ace guitarist in the company’s
famed house band, but he also got involved
in every aspect of the label: talent scouting,
engineering, promotion—even sweeping
the floor, when necessary. Most important
was his role as songwriter and producer.
As the musical mind behind “Dock of the
Bay,” “In the Midnight Hour,” “Knock on
Wood,” and scores of other Stax-produced
hits, he became a chief architect of
American soul music.
That house rhythm section fused into
its own performing group. Booker T. & the
MGs—which consisted of Cropper, organist/
pianist Booker T. Jones, bassist Lewie Steinberg
(replaced by Donald “Duck” Dunn in 1965),
and drummer Al Jackson, Jr.—became famous
for their groovy instrumental hit records and
for having an interracial lineup despite being
smack in the heart of the segregated South.
Cropper had originally just wanted to meet
girls and play rock and roll, but he wound up
becoming a musical pioneer and an unwitting
civil rights activist in the bargain.

Booker T. & the MGs—(left to right) second bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, drummer Al Jackson Jr.,
Steve Cropper, and organist Booker T. Jones—in a circa-1965 promotional shot. Photo courtesy
of
the Stax Museum of American Soul Music
Since parting with Stax in 1971, Cropper
has stayed busy across a wide front. He lent
cred and chops to the Blues Brothers, a semi-comic
tribute that became a torch carrier for
music from the Cropper school. He arguably
helped shoot them into the mainstream by
suggesting they record Sam & Dave’s “Soul
Man,” which became that hit album’s big
hit single. Cropper also performs occasionally
with Booker T. and Duck Dunn in
an updated incarnation of the MGs. Most
recently, Cropper has written and recorded
two albums with blue-eyed soul singer Felix
Cavaliere (formerly of the Rascals) for a
revived Stax imprint within the Concord
Music Group. Cavaliere (whose past hits
with the Rascals include “Groovin’” and
“A Beautiful Morning”) meshes easily with
Cropper’s wiry guitar parts, proving there’s
ample life in that original version of soul
music that radio stopped playing decades ago.
In Cropper’s latest gesture toward the
music that shaped him, he has presided
over and played on a multi-artist project
celebrating the music and legacy of the “5”
Royales. Based in Winston Salem, North
Carolina, the 1950s R&B group had hits
with songs that would become even
bigger
hits for others, such as “Think” (which
James Brown and the Fabulous Flames
took to No. 7 on the R&B charts) and
“Dedicated to the One I Love” (which
went to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100
chart for the Mamas & the Papas in 1967).
Cropper was enamored when he first
heard the band on the radio, and when he
caught them live in Memphis he became
a fervent fan of the group’s showy guitar
player, Lowman “Pete” Pauling. On the
Stax hero’s new tribute album,
Dedicated,
Cropper pays heartfelt homage to Pauling
alongside such notables as B.B. King,
Sharon Jones, Lucinda Williams, Steve
Winwood, and Delbert McClinton.
We recently got to shake Cropper’s
mighty hand at a Greek diner in Nashville,
where he’s lived for two decades. There,
over eggs and coffee, he reminisced and
caught us up on life as a hard-working,
award-winning guitar legend.

The MGs and friends hard at work in the studio in the mid to late ’60s. Left to right: Isaac Hayes sits at the piano
while Sam Moore and Dave Prater lean on the piano, Duck Dunn plays his Fender bass in the
background, Booker Jones plays the tuba, and Cropper plays through what appears to be a
blackface Fender Deluxe
Reverb. Photo courtesy of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music
How did the “5” Royales originally come
to your attention?
Basically, through the radio—there was
one particular song these guys did, a song
called “Think.” I went to a school in
Memphis called Messick, and it was a big
dance school. We all loved to dance. So
this song came about, and it had all these
guitar riffs in it. It really got my attention.
And I said, “That’s a song I want to
learn.” Prior to that, I’d been learning Bo
Diddley things and so forth. But Lowman
got my attention because of the way he
played rhythm.
And then you got to see Pauling and the
“5” Royales live, right?
Yes. We were working at a little club out
on Lamar called the Tropicana, and one
Saturday night they had this big show coming
in with the “5” Royales. The owner
said, “There won’t be a gig this weekend,
because we’ve got the “5” Royales coming
upstairs in the big room”—the big Beverly
Ballroom. So Duck and I said, “Is there any
way you can get us in?” And he said, “You
guys know you’re underage.” I said, “Yeah,
but can you sneak us in?” Anyway, he
believed we really needed to see this band,
so he got us in there. We politely sat in the
corner and got to see the whole show. We
were afraid to introduce ourselves, but we
observed everything and just went crazy.
Lowman Pauling had this long strap,
and I had seen Chuck Berry take his guitar
off or throw his strap and hold his guitar
down by his knees and play and dance
across the stage and do all sorts of stuff—
or pick it up and play behind his head.
That night, I couldn’t wait to get home.
My mom said, “What are you doing?”
and I said, “I’m looking for an extra belt.”
And she says, “You’ve got to go to bed.”
So the next morning, first thing when
I got up, I took the buckle off this old
belt and stitched it into my guitar strap
to make it longer so I could play like
Lowman Pauling.
I’ve been told that Pauling’s stabbing,
horn-like approach influenced you a
lot, too.
Exactly. If you listen to the old Stax
records, most of my licks, when I’m not
playing backbeat rhythms or something,
are more like horn lines—horn stabs.
When I was a kid, I used to think, “Oh
yeah, I can play that lick,” but when I
got into this project I really focused and
really listened to what Lowman Pauling
does. And I’m convinced I don’t have it
yet. I think he had some kind of funny
tuning—and when I say “funny,” I mean
anything other than standard tuning.
Because there are some things he plays
that I just can’t find in the position I’m
used to playing in. I couldn’t get the
inflection on certain things. He’s not
alive for me to ask, so I may never know.

How did this tribute album come to be?
It was not my idea. While nothing’s
ever over till it’s over, I had been saying
for the last couple of years that—with
our age and the age of the Booker T. &
the MGs and Blues Brothers projects—
the time for releasing new records and
doing things is just about to reach an
end. But [producer and saxophonist]
Jon Tiven, who we worked with on a
Felix Cavaliere record, was looking for
some kind of project he and I could
do together. He called me one day and
said, “Would you be interested in doing
a record as a tribute to the “5” Royales
music?” And I said, “Are you kidding?
Do you think you could get a record
company involved in that?” He said,
“I’ll call you right back.” And he did!
We got a record company and a budget,
and I’m going, “Holy mackerel! When
do we start?”
Stepping back a bit, when you were a
teenager in Memphis, starting to play
and attending sock hops and so forth, did
you aspire to play professionally? When
did that idea strike you?
No. There was a guy out of Memphis who
later came to Nashville and became a fairly
famous country singer. His name was Ed
Bruce. If I remember correctly, our school
had assemblies the last Friday of each
month. I don’t remember how often they
did the talent show, but I saw Ed Bruce at
one of them. I was in the ninth grade, a
freshman, and I think he told me that when
he did that he was a junior—so he was two
years ahead of me. He came out with just
his guitar, his Gibson electric guitar and an
amplifier, and sang Bo Diddley [songs].
And then there was a place that we used
to go and dance on Friday night called the
Casino, and I remember seeing Ed Bruce
again, live on that stage, and he did Bo
Diddley again. I somehow just was drawn,
like a magnet, and made my way to the
backstage. There was no security—nobody
told me I couldn’t do it—and I walked
back behind the curtain and he was putting
his guitar up. I said something stupid
like, “Man, how do you
do that?” And he
said, “Well, son, you just got to get you
a guitar and learn how to play it.” Okay,
end of conversation.
What happened then?
When I got home after school, the first
thing I did was grab the Sears and Roebuck
catalog and start looking at the guitars. I
asked my dad to buy me a guitar and he
said, “Son, we can’t afford a guitar.” “But
Dad, it’s only 17 dollars!” “We don’t have 17
dollars.” And they didn’t. So, I started doing
odd jobs for money. My dad, at the time,
would pay me 50 cents during the week
to mow the yard and hand-trim the grass
around the sidewalk. If I didn’t get it done
by Friday evening, I didn’t go out—not
only did I not get any money for it, I got
grounded as well! He was a pretty strict guy.

The MGs in a promo shot for their 1970
album, McLemore Avenue, which Booker
Jones reportedly
intended as an homage to
the Beatles’ Abbey Road. Photo courtesy of
the Stax Museum of American
Soul Music |
But anyway, I continued on, and I
shined shoes. I mowed other people’s
yards, set bowling pins. I did whatever I
could to make a quarter or 50 cents, and
raised 17 dollars. That’s how much the
Silvertone flattop, round-hole guitar was
in the catalog. I had my mom help me
order it, and I had my 17 dollars and I
waited there on Saturday, because they
were going to deliver it on Saturday. I
sat on that front porch till my butt got
raw. Finally, here comes the Sears truck
around the corner, and I’m going nuts.
They brought it in a box—no case, a cardboard
box. They pulled it off the truck
and brought it up to the front porch—I
couldn’t wait to get in there to see this
thing. They said, “That’ll be a 25-cent
delivery fee.” Nobody had said that! It
wasn’t in the catalog. They didn’t tell me
that on the order form. I thought delivery
was free, and I go, “Mom!” [
Laughs.] So
Mom always said if she hadn’t lent me the
quarter that day, I’d never have been a guitar
player. That’s her claim to fame.
Eventually, your dad bought your first
electric guitar, and you started playing
locally. I read that you took lessons from
a local player named Lynn Vernon.
Lynn was a great player, a great jazz player
and a good teacher. I took, I think, about
three paid lessons from him—three or four.
It wasn’t expensive by today’s standards,
but they were expensive then. A true story:
He opened the page to the music and said,
“Okay, play this,” and then he played. Then
he listened while I played it, and he goes, “I
knew it—you’re not reading the notes. You’re
playing what I just played.” I said, “Dang,
I got caught,” you know! I thought he was
going to kill me, but he didn’t. He said, “I’ll
tell you what you do. Why don’t you get
three or four of your favorite records or songs
you want to learn, and bring them next time.
I’ll teach them to you.” One of them was
“Walk, Don’t Run” by the Ventures. I think
the other one was part of the solo stuff in
“Honky Tonk,” from Bill Doggett’s record.
And it all started from there.
Later, Charlie Freeman [a friend with
whom Cropper started the Mar-Keys] was
taking lessons at Lynn Vernon’s. I would go
home and get my guitar, walk to his house,
and be sitting on his front porch when he
got home, waiting to download what he
had been taught that day. The benefit was
twofold. One was, Charlie had somebody
to work and rehearse with, and it caused me
to learn a little more rhythm to play behind
what he was doing—because Charlie was
more of a jazz-solo guy. He would teach
me the chords that he’d learned that day. I
would play the rhythm chords and he’d start
playing solo stuff, so we became a team. I
didn’t want to learn a lot of jazz stuff—I
just wanted to do, you know, rock and roll
songs and stuff like that, which we did.
What do you think you brought to the
guitar intuitively?
Well, I don’t know if I helped the instrument
any [
laughs]. I just used it a little
differently. I learned that, in music—kind
of like in golf—less is more. I don’t know
how it was across the country, but I know
how it was in Memphis, Tennessee, on sessions:
The more you played, the less they
liked it. Most sessions—at least in the
rock ’n’ roll or R&B stuff—were all “head
arranged.” There were no charts. You could
do what you wanted to do as long as you
didn’t get in the way of what was going on,
like the singer and all that. So I learned
very early to play less and get out of the
way. And now they talk about it and say,
“Wasn’t he brilliant? He left all these holes.”
[
Laughs.] Usually the holes were left because
I wanted to keep the job that I had, and the
other times it was because I couldn’t think
of anything to put in there! Simple seemed
to be the better way to go.
That’s all changed today—everybody is
stepping on everybody. It changed in L.A.
25, 30 years ago. When you’d go to a session,
there would be four or five other guitar players
on the date and I’d wonder, “What the
hell is this all about?” The reason there was
one guitar player on most of the Stax early
hits is because they could only afford one
guitar player, and I was willing to work for
15 dollars a session. Other people weren’t.
Once you started working at Stax, you did
much more than play guitar on sessions.
People say you worked very hard. Can
you describe your mindset at the time?

Cropper’s first solo album, 1971’s With a Little
Help from My Friends, was all-instrumental—just
as the MGs’ had been. |
I saw it as something that had to be done.
As far as work ethic, I was just on automatic
pilot. I knew that you couldn’t sit in the studio
or sit at home and get airplay. So I teamed up
with one of the local distributors and got to be
friends with a guy named Bill Biggs. He used
to get in his car with boxes of records and call
on the jukebox operators. While he was calling
on those guys, I would have him drop me
off at the radio station and I’d find a station
manager or the program manager or the local
disc jockey that was on the air, and say, “Hey,
I’m Steve Cropper from Stax in Memphis, and
we’ve got this new record. I’d like for you to
hear it, and if you like it, maybe you’ll play it
for us.” I hit all of the major cities within 150
miles of Memphis. With “Green Onions,” Bill
and I went all the way to Texarkana [Texas]
and back. We hit Fort Smith and Little
Rock and Texarkana and made the rounds.
We went down next week into Tupelo and
Jackson, Mississippi, then Jackson, Tennessee,
and made that circle. Within a week and a
half, we’d saturated the market with “Green
Onions.” New York Atlantic got wind of this
and went, “This is the hottest friggin’ record
since . . . Get it out!”
How did you connect with Booker T. Jones?
I asked around. I said, “We need a keyboard
player,” and they said, “Oh, go check
out Booker T.” He was still 15 or barely
16, but he could really play. What I didn’t
know was that he played
everything—bass,
baritone sax . . . he was taking trombone
in school. He was a great musician and still
is—one of the best in the world.
I remember the day I went to his
house—it was so strange. I knocked on
the door. His mom comes to the door, and
I said, “Is Booker home?” and she said,
“Yeah, he’s back in the den. I’ll show you.”
Didn’t question me or ask, “What’s this
white kid doing on my front porch?” She
just assumed Booker knew me. I go back in
the den and he’s sitting on the couch, playing
the guitar. I’m going,
Wait a minute—
what’s wrong with this picture? I’m here to ask
him to come and play keyboards!
Booker brought up when I was working
up front in the record shop before I knew
him. He said, “You don’t remember that. I
used to come in there to listen to records, and
you were the only salesman that would let me
listen. I could stay in there for hours and I got
to listen to all these good songs.” He said, “I
was fortunate enough I had a memory and
I could go home and remember what I just
heard, because they didn’t always play those
records on the radio, and I couldn’t afford to
buy them—but you would let me listen.”
How unusual was the idea of Booker T.
& the MGs being an instrumental band,
writing their own instrumentals, and covering
songs in an instrumental fashion?
And why did that persist as an instrumental
project, by and large?
For one reason and one reason only:
Our first hit came out of a jam session.
We were waiting on an artist to come in
and do demos. He didn’t show. We were
just making time with our instruments
and goofing off and playing around. Jim
[Stewart, founder of Stax] had everything
set to record. We were playing this blues
thing and he just reached over and hit the
record button on an old Ampex 150 mono
machine. At the end, we were all just laughing,
and Jim says, “Hey, guys, you want to
come in and listen to that?” We go, “Listen
to it? You mean you recorded that?” “Yeah,
come in and listen to this. It’s pretty good.”
We were dumbfounded, because we were
really just goofing off. He said, “If we decided
to put something like this out, have you got
anything you could put on the B side?” And
I said, “Booker, you remember that thing you
played me a couple of weeks ago?” “Yeah, I
think so.” So we went out and played it, and
Jim said, “Hey, that’s pretty cool. Let’s do
that.” Three cuts later, we had
Green Onions,
which became a No. 1 one record—that’s
why we were an instrumental group.

The MGs in another promo shot for McLemore Avenue. Photo courtesy of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music
Years after Stax, we entered the era of the
guitar god—when players became famous
for playing gigantic solos and being very
technical. That was never your direction.
That’s probably why I didn’t have a lot of hits,
but I made a lot of good records. When I produced
people like Jeff Beck and Robben Ford
and other bands that had great guitar players,
it was like, “Why even bother [trying to do
that]?” I’m more comfortable and I’m better
off here, producing behind the window and
influencing what goes on that record, taste-wise
or whatever, than I am trying to play like
these guys. If I had been locked in my room
when I was in high school, I might have come
out a better guitar player, but I wasn’t. I did
many other things—then and today.
How did you get talked into the Blues
Brothers job—and did it feel like the real
deal versus a stage show of some sort?
It just came to me as another offer, which
I initially turned down completely, pointblank.
I was in the middle of mixing Robben
Ford’s album and a call came in—and when
I’m mixing, there’s no calls, no nothing.
Well, the [receptionist] told me later that she
sent it back during the session because John
Belushi was on the phone. He said, “Yeah,
we’re doing this thing and I need you in the
band,” and I said, “I hate to disappoint you,
but I’m in the middle of a project.” He said,
“Well, we’re starting tomorrow. I need you to
catch the next plane.” I said, “Hey man, I’m
telling you I can’t do it. I won’t be there.” He
kept me on the phone and kept me on the
phone, and on and on and on. It seemed like
an hour—it was probably only 10 or 15 minutes—
and I said, “Man, I’m sorry to do this.
I’ve got to go.” Robben Ford turned around
and said, “Who were you talking to?” I said,
“John Belushi from
Saturday Night Live is
putting a band together and he wants me to
come up and play.” Robben said, “I’ll do it!”
And I said, “No, you won’t!” [
Laughs.] So,
anyway, I called Jim back and said, “This is
Cropper. I can be there in three days.”
When we got up there, I remember
John and Danny [Aykroyd] were together
in front of the band, and I remember them
saying, “Guys, we won’t be able to make
you rich out of this, but we can keep you
laughing.” I remember them saying that,
and it’s true. It was probably about as much
fun as you can have playing live.
Briefcase Full of Blues was my first blues
album as a kid, and I expect that’s true for
lots of people. But it wasn’t a gimmick.
Well, it was serious music. I mean, the press
made it appear as if it was a joke, but it wasn’t
a joke at all. When it did come out, they said,
“These guys are just poking fun at rhythm
and blues,” and we’re sitting there, thinking,
“What kind of an interview is this? We’ve
got to educate these guys, because they don’t
know what the hell they’re talking about.”
John had played drums in a band in Canada
for a long time, and he had one of the biggest
blues collections of anybody I’ve ever run into.
And Danny had studied his harmonica, and
he’s a walking dictionary—he’s that brilliant.
His IQ must be over the roof. That’s what
these writers didn’t get, so when it was time
for us to do some interviews, we started telling
them the truth about who John and Danny
were. They weren’t just two comedians. They
were very talented musicians, and John could
really sing. And adding the comedy and the
crazy dancing stuff—it just went over. The
audiences loved it, but they also liked it on
record.
Briefcase Full of Blues sold three and
a half million copies. That’s triple platinum,
right off the bat—pretty big.

Dedicated bassist David Hood (left) relaxing with Cropper between takes at Dan Penn’s studio in
Nashville.
Photo courtesy of Jol Dantzig
How did you hook up with Felix Cavaliere?
Northwest Airlines had put together a band
that came out of a touring backup band
for Ringo Starr. Randy Bachman was the
original guitar player in that band, with Felix
playing, too. The basic rhythm section was
the guys that had been on the road with Billy
Joel for a long time. Chris Clouser, who was
then the vice president of Northwest Airlines
and very good friends with Felix, called Felix
and said, “We’ve got to get Cropper. Are
you going to make the call or am I?” It was
a promotional item for Northwest to throw
a concert for their frequent-flyer people and
some of their higher-up employees and that
kind of thing. I enjoyed doing it, and we did
something like 18 or 20 shows.
When Felix and I had been out on the
road together for about two years, somebody
made the connection and said something
about how Felix was sort of from an R&B
background, making R&B songs with a
white group, and then Cropper, man, the
two of them ought to get together and make
a record. So Jon Tiven, the producer, was
the main guy that influenced that. He called
Felix, he called me, and he got us together
to write. That was the whole premise of it. It
was going so well, he said, “Man, you guys
ought to do this on your own and put out
a record.” So we made a deal with Concord
and made record one, and it did well enough
for them to ask for record two.
Does your guitar matched with his voice
and keyboards put you in a place where
you’re super comfortable?
The time we’re together, we’re in a time
warp—we leave the outside and go right
into what we’re doing. Absolutely, yeah. He
and I have already discussed the third record.
He didn’t want to stop, and it is a lot of fun.
The awards have been coming at you
pretty fast in recent years—from the
Recording Academy, the Musician’s Hall
of Fame, and the Songwriter’s Hall of
Fame. Did you see this coming?
Well, no. When Booker T. & the MGs
were being given a lifetime achievement
award with NARAS or another one, we
were backstage and Booker looked at
Duck and me and said, “Does this make
us dinosaurs?” You try not to look at that,
because it is that way a lot—they wheel
some guy up in a wheelchair and they
give him an award, and I don’t want to be
that guy. We’re still out there working all
the time. I’m working with three bands
on a regular basis, not counting all the
other stuff that we do. I don’t think about
age, but it does sort of date you when you
get one of those hall of fame things.
Gear Inspired by His Ear
Steve Cropper discusses his barebones rig and his
early transition from an ES-335 to T-style solidbodies.
Steve Cropper became a solidbody guitar guy years ago after a particularly hot
gig with Booker T. & the MGs. “Hot,” as in blazing sun at the Atlanta Pop
Festival. Cropper played a Gibson ES-335, a model he’d worked with off and
on since his days with the Mar-Keys. “It was the cherry red stereo model,”
he remembers. “They are so hard to find—I have not seen another one that’s
stereo. There’s close stuff—with the same neck, same shape, same inlays, and
all that . . . usually with a Bigsby. I loved that guitar.” But on that sweltering
Atlanta afternoon, Cropper recalls drummer Al Jackson, Jr. approaching him
with a cool towel over his head. “‘Cropper!’ he said, ‘Bring the Tele next time!’”

Keyboardist Spooner Oldham (of Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin, and Wilson Pickett fame), Hood,
drummer Steve Jordan, producer Jon Tiven, and Cropper during the Dedicated sessions. Photo
courtesy of Jol Dantzig
“Al liked the Telecaster sound for the MGs—not the more rock-and-roll,
fuzzed-up gear,” Cropper says. Indeed, a Fender Telecaster is what you see
in nearly all Cropper photos from the Stax years. As a solo artist, however,
Cropper was won over some 15 years ago by a Peavey rep bearing gifts—but
before that, he’d played Peaveys and hadn’t liked them.
“Paul Robinson, who was their top Southern salesman, called me from
Memphis one day and said, ‘I’ve got something that I think you might be
interested in.’ I’m going, ‘Hmm. Okay, Paul.’ So he shows up at a session,
and when we took a break he went out to the car and brought this guitar in.
My first thought was, “Okay, here’s another Peavey that I’m going to have to
smile and say, ‘Thank you, but no thank you’ to. I plugged it in and played it
a little bit, and I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ They got it right.” That’s
the one I’ve played for 14 years.
“When we did the Peavey Steve Cropper Classic production model, we took
a lot of the things that were in that guitar,” Cropper explains. “We measured
the necks on some of my other favorite guitars and put it all on the computer
and averaged them—that’s what we milled the neck out to be. All of them,
I might add, had rosewood fretboards. I don’t remember playing a blonde-necked
Telecaster—ever—on any records at Stax. I’m a rosewood guy, because
I like that more deadened sound. The lacquered blonde necks are too glassy for
me, too wiry. They might have worked live, but I didn’t play live onstage a lot,
so I always liked that deader sound from the rosewood fretboard.”
Cropper plugs his custom Peavey directly into his amp of choice, a Fender
“The Twin”—which Cropper says is easy to find to rent all over the world,
despite being discontinued. His only pedal is a tuner. He plays light-gauge
strings (.010s) and is not partial to a particular brand. His medium-gauge
picks are made by Pick Guy Inc. in Westfield, Indiana.