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!”
Dedicated bassist David Hood (left) relaxing with Cropper between takes at Dan Penn’s studio in
Nashville. Photo courtesy of Jol Dantzig
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 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
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 laugh-
ing, 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.
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, point-blank. 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
