Steve Cropper has “lived long enough to have a past,” according to the legendary guitarist who has helmed a five-decade stand with Booker T. & the M.G.s, Otis Redding, and the Blues Brothers to name just a few in his long, storied, and historic career. Indeed, as Jambands.com sat down with the larger than life musician, he was coming off a series of short interviews that had somehow encapsulated a lifetime’s worth of experiences into small pockets of time. We got lucky as Cropper decided to stretch out because, at this point, as he sagely said, “if someone asks me a question, it’s gonna take a while. You can’t knock that out in ten minutes; it’s just not going to happen.”

So Cropper stretched out and took his time in our conversation, which is both fortuitous and ironic considering the six-string icon is noted for being succinct and precise with his music. Truly, one can not think of a musician who can cover so much creative ground with so few notes, as Cropper has long since mastered the art of ‘less is more’ within a creative idiom which can often seem self-indulgent. The guitarist is clearly not that way, even after his long career of highlights. On Dedicated, Cropper pays tribute to his biggest influence, guitarist Lowman “Pete” Pauling of the seminal R&B group The 5 Royales. The 15-track release features the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame artist, Steve “The Colonel” Cropper, and an entire squadron of elite guests including Steve Winwood, B.B. King, John Popper, Sharon Jones, Buddy Miller, Bettye LaVette, Brian May, Lucinda Williams, and Dan Penn covering the 5 Royales music, which influenced Cropper, who in turn went on to inspire the generations of musicians who followed in his wake.

RR: You have said that you have four or five careers. Define that for me.

SC: Career wise, you’ve gotta be talking about the Mar-Keys, then you’ve gotta be talkin’ about Booker T. & the M.G.s, and then you’ve gotta be talkin’ about the Blues Brothers, and then, I would say, the next part about it was that the Blues Brothers were all encompassed into one when you’re talking about Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, the movie, and what we did right afterwards. Then, that happened. Now, you’ve got the original Blues Brothers band that’s been touring, and this year will be 23 years in a row. That was a whole other entity in itself. The fact that we went out and promoted ourselves as the original Blues Brothers band, which means it’s not about Jake and Elwood, we play music from all the films, a song from this, a song from that, as we had four records, we had two movies, (laughs) we had our own record that we did, so we tried to hit and miss little bits of the pieces. We’ve had Eddie Floyd with us for 21 years, and so, it’s sort of the Blues Brothers at the beginning, and then, it turns into a Stax show (laughs), and then, we kind of finalé it a little bit with stuff like “Soul Man” that Jake and Elwood would have done, and that’s the show and everybody gets off on it. That would be my four careers and not including the one I had in high school. (laughs)

RR: Let’s talk about how you have stood the test of time by going back to your origins. What was Duck Dunn’s part in introducing you to the music which you celebrate on your new album, Dedicated: A Salute to the 5 Royales ?

SC: We had a band that played all the time, the Mar-Keys, and we came right out of high school. We had already been doing a lot of proms and all of that. When we graduated from high school, some of us went to college, and some of us didn’t. But, fortunately for me, I was still in town; I went to Memphis State. I didn’t live Memphis, I still was there, and I was there on purpose because I wanted to be close to that band. I wasn’t about to give up that band, or lose it, or leave it.

We worked at different clubs. I remember there was one called Neal’s Hideaway that we worked at for nine months, and I was going to Memphis State at the time. I would get out of school on Tuesdays and Thursdays at about 12:30, and on Monday and Wednesday and Friday, I’d get out about 1:30. I would leave there, go home, change clothes, and go to the grocery store that I worked at. I worked different jobs. I started out as a sacker there, then I managed one section where they checked in the bottles, and I sold cigarettes and did whatever. They would let me get off work at 9, sometimes about five ‘til, because the manager knew that I was on stage. I would drive to Middleton, Tennessee, and I’d be on stage for the second set. I’d get off stage at 3:45 in the morning (laughs), and I’d head home, get a couple of hours of sleep, get up, grab a book or two, and I’d be in class by 7:30 in the morning. And I did that for a long time.

Duck was the bassist in the band, and this one particular club we played was called the Tropicana, and they had the 5 Royales comin’ to town. Duck and I had always been big fans of the 5 Royales. His brother worked for King Record Distributors, and they got all these King Records in, and so we started listening to Earl Bostic, James Brown, you name it, and the 5 Royales. We listened to that, and oh man, we just loved that kind of music, so we did a few of those songs live all the time—“Think,” “Say It,” “Dedicated to the One I Love.” They came to town. And the club we were playing at—the Beverly Ballroom—they were going to play upstairs from where we were playing. They weren’t going to open the small club that night because they knew nobody’d be there and everybody would be upstairs at this big event. So we talked to the owner and asked, “Can you get us in to see the 5 Royales?” And he said, “I don’t know if I can do that; you guys are not old enough to go up there.” (laughter) We weren’t old enough to be downstairs, either, but we were there. Duck and I were still 20 years old; we hadn’t turned 21 yet, so you’re not supposed to go to where they sell liquor and stuff and not be 21.

[The club owner] said, “Let me see what I can do,” so we came down there on that night, and he snuck us in the back door. We got to see the 5 Royales. We didn’t get to meet ‘em, or talk to them, or any of that, but we got to see them perform, and it was just a great educational night to see these guys singing and playing and the guitar player, Lowman Pauling just blew us away. Duck was influenced by the bass player, as well. He’s got a few stories about that, but it was really awesome that we got to see those guys live, and they were idols of ours and there we were getting to see it. That was real rare in Memphis, Tennessee. If you wanted to see somebody downtown like Little Richard or Bo

Diddley, it cost a lot of money, so (laughs) that’s something we didn’t have in those days, and we missed out on a lot of the live acts that came to Memphis.

Now, one thing we used to do was that if Ray Charles was playing a place like the Hippodrome downtown, we’d get in the car, and drive down Beale Street real slow with the windows down. (laughter) It’s a true story. We’d drive by real slow with the windows down, and see if we could hear music through the walls. We were a band that loved to play dance music, and those guys, like Ray Charles and James Brown, played great dance music. One of the groups that I was told—and I don’t know if they were influenced—were kind of in competition with the 5 Royales was Hank Ballard & the Midnighters. And, as you know, they came up with the song, “The Twist,” and I read a story somewhere that they got booked in the same town where the 5 Royales were from (laughs), and they sort of got booed off the stage because there were the 5 Royales.

We had to do that one time in Kansas City. This is when Booker T.—Booker T. Jones—was going to college. He still liked to play and work, so on weekends, he had this little band that he would play with, so there was a booking agent out in Memphis called Ray Brown, and he booked Booker T. and the M.G.s, and we did a lot of shows for him, and then Booker went off to college, so we didn’t work much. Well, [Brown] called and said, “I’ve got this great gig in Kansas City, Missouri,” and we said, “We’ll have to call Booker. He’s in college, and maybe he’ll drive over somehow, or fly over, or whatever we’ve got to do.” It was a really good paying gig, so we called Booker, and Booker said, “Well, I’m already booked.” We said, “Man, get out of your gig; we’ve got a great gig in Kansas City.” He said, “No, I can’t get out of it; I’m locked, I’m booked.”

The next morning, Duck and I were walking around the studio saying, “I can’t believe we can’t do this gig in Kansas City next weekend.” I think Al Jackson [Jr., drums] said, “Why don’t we take Isaac Hayes?” And, so, O.K., we went and got Isaac: “Isaac, we’ve got this great gig next weekend in Kansas City. Can you come and play with us and do Booker T.’s stuff?” And he said, “Yeah, man, that’ll be a lot of fun.” Off we go, and we set up and we’re there and nobody knows who Booker is and all of that, and we’re playing a theatre downtown in Kansas City, and we’re on stage, and we’re playing “Green Onions”—we always opened with “Green Onions,” so everybody knew who we were—and we started playing some other stuff, and about the second song some girl jumped up and said, “You’re not Booker T.!” (laughter) Isaac Hayes is up behind the organ, and I don’t know what good that would do because there were people up in the high balcony that could see. So for the next thirty minutes he played while hiding behind the organ. “He ain’t no Booker T.!”

Maybe she was from Memphis and knew Booker. I had no idea. It sent a shockwave across the stage. We’d get in trouble like that every now and then.

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