2025’s “Top” Ten Music Losses: Steve Cropper (#8)

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Okay, all you sn*w loving freaks, get over here and shovel my driveway! It’s already turned the car from blue to white in under an hour…and we still have a foot or so of this stuff left to fall. Let’s cure the winter blues with music as I pay tribute to one of the greats who left us in 2025. #8: Steve Cropper Steve “The Colonel” Cropper. No, he wasn’t in the military. He said he got the nickname because he had a booming, “take-charge” kind of voice in the studio. That’s not the good part. This is one of my favorite quotes/admissions/pieces of self-deprecating humor I’ve heard a musician utter about himself: My playing has always sucked, but it sells because I keep it simple. Okay, let’s assume that Cropper’s guitar playing was bad. He co-wrote “Green Onions” by Booker T and the MGs, and “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” with Otis Redding. That’s enough right there to cement a legacy, I guarantee you. Cropper’s skill was good enough to shine through countless hits, such as “Soul Man” by Sam & Dave (“play it, Steve!,” which John Belushi repeated when the Blues Brothers covered the song and Cropper played on their rendition) and “In the Midnight Hour” by Wilson Pickett. The list of people who used him as a session musician is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame list: Rod Stewart, Jimmy Buffett, Chicago, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, and many non-Hall of Famers like Neil Sedaka, Stephen Bishop, John Prine, and even Ann-Margaret! I don’t care what he said about his playing, the man was GOOD. We lost a giant when he died in a rehabilitation facility after falling last month. Steve Cropper Born Stephen Lee Cropper, October 21, 1941, Dora, Missouri Died December 3, 2025, Nashville, Tennessee (unknown cause after a fall) (age 84) HALLS OF FAME: Rock and Roll, 1992; Musicians, 2008 (both with Booker T & the MGs); Songwriters, 2005; Nashville Songwriters, 2010 Cropper talking about the Blues Brothers Band: