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This is the story of the day in March 1967, when the Beatles bowed down and kissed the ring of an American guitarist whose name few people knew.
Steve Cropper watched in astonishment as John, Paul, George and Ringo prostrated themselves before him. He was dressed in one of the suits his record label had bought for him just a couple weeks earlier on Beale Street in his hometown of Memphis, Tenn.
Cropper, then just 25, was a guitarist and A&R man for Stax Records. The label that would one day be known as “Soulsville USA” had been formed in Memphis a decade earlier by a white fiddle player named Jim Stewart, and had gone by the name of Satellite Records until a 1961 national distribution deal with Atlantic Records brought them to the attention of a California company with the same name.
After some legalistic saber-rattling from the West Coast company, the Memphis-based Satellite became Stax Records — but continued to operate from its ad hoc headquarters in an old movie theater on McLemore Avenue in downtown Memphis.
It was in that theater that Cropper had recorded his first hit in 1961, “Last Night,” with his band, the Mar-Keys. That record, with its insistent blasts of horn layered over the cool blues organ of a young Isaac Hayes, had been Stax's first 45 to be nationally distributed under the new deal with Atlantic and went to #3 on the Hot 100.
When the song's producer, Chips Moman, left Stax three years later in a pay dispute, Stewart promoted the young Cropper to take Moman's place, and drafted four members of the Mar-Keys -- Cropper, bassist “Duck” Dunn, drummer Al Jackson Jr., and keyboardist Booker T. Jones — to become the house band for Stax.
Thus was Booker T. & the M.G.'s born.
Over the next few years, Cropper had a hand -- as a writer, producer or backup musician -- in the creation of some of the most important American music of the 20th century. In addition to playing on hit singles by Booker T. & the M.G.'s themselves, like “Green Onions” and “Hip Hug-Her,” and other Stax hits such as Sam and Dave's “Soul Man” and Eddie Floyd's “Knock On Wood,” the guitarist also co-wrote classics like “In the Midnight Hour” (for Wilson Pickett) and “(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay” (for Otis Redding).
But in March 1967 at the launch of the first European “Stax Revue” tour, Cropper and the other M.G.'s still had no idea of the stir their music had created around the globe. So they were flabbergasted when, upon arriving in London, they were greeted on the tarmac by a fleet of limousines provided for the Stax musicians by none other than the Beatles. And when the Fab Four met the M.G.'s shortly thereafter, they knelt before the Memphis group that had wowed them with their instrumental prowess, and kissed the ring of a 25-year-old guitar picker from Tennessee.
Notes is supported by the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado, partnering with the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado to promote the values of mutual respect, religious diversity, inclusiveness, compassion and justice.
Craven Lovelace produces Notes, a daily cultural history of popular music, for KAFM 88.1 Community Radio, kafmradio.org. You can visit cravenlovelace.com for more of his musings on the world of popular culture.
Steve Cropper watched in astonishment as John, Paul, George and Ringo prostrated themselves before him. He was dressed in one of the suits his record label had bought for him just a couple weeks earlier on Beale Street in his hometown of Memphis, Tenn.
Cropper, then just 25, was a guitarist and A&R man for Stax Records. The label that would one day be known as “Soulsville USA” had been formed in Memphis a decade earlier by a white fiddle player named Jim Stewart, and had gone by the name of Satellite Records until a 1961 national distribution deal with Atlantic Records brought them to the attention of a California company with the same name.
After some legalistic saber-rattling from the West Coast company, the Memphis-based Satellite became Stax Records — but continued to operate from its ad hoc headquarters in an old movie theater on McLemore Avenue in downtown Memphis.
It was in that theater that Cropper had recorded his first hit in 1961, “Last Night,” with his band, the Mar-Keys. That record, with its insistent blasts of horn layered over the cool blues organ of a young Isaac Hayes, had been Stax's first 45 to be nationally distributed under the new deal with Atlantic and went to #3 on the Hot 100.
When the song's producer, Chips Moman, left Stax three years later in a pay dispute, Stewart promoted the young Cropper to take Moman's place, and drafted four members of the Mar-Keys -- Cropper, bassist “Duck” Dunn, drummer Al Jackson Jr., and keyboardist Booker T. Jones — to become the house band for Stax.
Thus was Booker T. & the M.G.'s born.
Over the next few years, Cropper had a hand -- as a writer, producer or backup musician -- in the creation of some of the most important American music of the 20th century. In addition to playing on hit singles by Booker T. & the M.G.'s themselves, like “Green Onions” and “Hip Hug-Her,” and other Stax hits such as Sam and Dave's “Soul Man” and Eddie Floyd's “Knock On Wood,” the guitarist also co-wrote classics like “In the Midnight Hour” (for Wilson Pickett) and “(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay” (for Otis Redding).
But in March 1967 at the launch of the first European “Stax Revue” tour, Cropper and the other M.G.'s still had no idea of the stir their music had created around the globe. So they were flabbergasted when, upon arriving in London, they were greeted on the tarmac by a fleet of limousines provided for the Stax musicians by none other than the Beatles. And when the Fab Four met the M.G.'s shortly thereafter, they knelt before the Memphis group that had wowed them with their instrumental prowess, and kissed the ring of a 25-year-old guitar picker from Tennessee.
Notes is supported by the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado, partnering with the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado to promote the values of mutual respect, religious diversity, inclusiveness, compassion and justice.
Craven Lovelace produces Notes, a daily cultural history of popular music, for KAFM 88.1 Community Radio, kafmradio.org. You can visit cravenlovelace.com for more of his musings on the world of popular culture.
