Steve Cropper

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is the one in the truly legendary
Steve Kropper. Steve, great to have you here. So, how
you been handling COVID very delicately? Okay? So have you
been vaccinated yet? I have not. That is my choice, okay, okay,

(00:32):
and that's your choice because and if they come up
with this thing about a vaccination to get on the plane,
that's today I stopped flying. Okay, okay. There's only two
people on this planet and not hear anymore. They're in
the planet. My mom and Daddy. The only people tell
me what to do. So you have a new album.

(00:57):
How did that come together? Well, but because of this pandemic,
and it came together and now it's it's almost over.
The pandemic is almost over. But during the lockdowns, so
it was John Tivers I did to pull up these
old tracks and do something with him and they turned
out great. So and I had just written them off.
Did you know Tivin before this? Oh yeah, known him

(01:19):
for a long time. So all the songs we wrote together. Okay,
So he approached you and just for those out of
the loop, exactly what is on the record. I wouldn't
say exactly. I'll tell you what happened. Let me tell
you about the album. He has a studio in his house.

(01:40):
I do not. I have never had a studio at
my house. When I go home, I go home. I
don't take my work home with me. But with the
computer age, you know, you're on doing emails or whatever.
And when I get up in the morning, I'm usually
on the computer before seven thirty. And today I got
off at nine third. Two hours of just getting rid

(02:03):
of stuff and answer things and it's fun. Okay, we've
got two things going up. What are you? Who's looking
for you that it takes two hours to go through
your email? Everybody just trying to sell something. And I
bet you I have deleted every morning at least twenty
or thirty emails, and I try to not be subscribed

(02:27):
to them, and I hit that and they call back.
So I have an old car. Just to give you
an example, Okay, I bet I get three or four
calls a day wanting to extend my warranty on my
old car. Okay, what kind of car is it? And
Infinity a good one? Really? You see Avanti the old

(02:50):
student baker, Did I hear that correctly? I could go
for an old car, but it's not. It was new
when I bought it. I have a twenty eleven. My
wife has a twenty our team. Okay, so you get
all the email and phone calls that are junk calls?
How many personal and business personal business email and calls
do you get? Hundreds? And what are they looking for? Well,

(03:18):
that's a good question. Either an autograph or want me
to play something. We'll do a concert or you know,
perform or whatever. And what does it take for you
to say yes? A question? Do you want to do this?
I will say? Is you always say so? Guys that

(03:40):
are farm more important than I am, I don't know
how they deal with life. It's amazing because if a
little guy like me guess that kind of mail, they
must be getting thousands a day. So if I emailed
you for some reason I had your email address and
I asked you to play on my record, you would
say yes, Well, that depend on what the record is.

(04:01):
I'd have to hear it first, Okay, But you're open
to everybody absolutely. Okay, Well, that certainly gives you more opportunity,
but it certainly takes you two hours to get through this?
And is it mostly on the computer or how many
people still call it's motionally on a computer? By email? Okay? Now,

(04:23):
you have a big birthday coming up this year, and
I don't want to go too deeply into that at
this moment. But what's it like having some of your
best buddies pass? It's not fun. So I am one
of the few lucky people on this planet. I can
say that my father lost my best friend. I've lost

(04:44):
all my other friends and families. Is your father in law?
How old is he? Same age? Okay? And what about
how do you handle all your contemporaries dying? Say it again,
contemporary dives that what you said? You know, know your
old musician friends, your old buddies who are dying. Even
I'm younger than you, I'm still experiencing this. It's weird

(05:06):
that my friends die and it makes me think about
dying myself. Well, you're trying not to think about it.
I try not to think about it. But you know,
there's only one guy left and the out of the
original band, and uh, as far as book of ten
m g s, it would be book A ten MG.
Now three of the other mgs are gone. They have

(05:31):
since gone. Ben. You know, the funny thing is these
people are in plain sight and one day they're gonna disappear.
And everybody says, oh, I could have seen him, I
could have talked to him. It's really so sad. So
Tivin approaches you and he says, well, we wrote these
songs together. Let's let's lay him down. Yeah. And I said,

(05:53):
if you want to bring these things back to life,
you're gonna Ben a singer. He says, I got one.
I said you better send me something. So he did.
And when you do, and I said, where's this guy
been on my life? Roger Real or something else? I
never heard it? Hands? Okay, So where'd you come from? Well,
it's up north. That's probably why I never heard of.
We never crossed pass We should have crossed passed somewhere

(06:15):
down the line, but we didn't. Okay. And did you
do it via the computer? Did you go to John Studio? Well,
every song on this album, if you listen to it,
was done. The vocal was done through an iPhone and
even my engineers, yeah, which is amazing. That was mixed
in Pro Tools, so it was bounced down to Pro tools,

(06:35):
which I don't think pro tools didn't change anything, but
it was all done with an iPhone and it's for
the sake of the record and promotion. It's too bad
because that would have been a real good, uh promotional item.
But now they're into movies. You can edit your own movies,
just like Hollywood and all that. So let's hope they
can do that. And I know that the iPhone people
have been bragging about their phones or their microphones in

(06:58):
their in their telephone us for a long time, and
people just took it for granted. They were more into
the picture thing with selfish and so forth, which is fine,
and people just kind of forgot that that's a real
good mike in that iPhone. And then how did you
lay down your guitar? Well, originally it was just the

(07:20):
rhythm tracks mainly with a loop, and then we brought
in extra drummers. Now, as far as all the solo licks,
when Roger finished the vocals, I said, I'm not laying
down any any lead licks until I hear the vocal
and so I just get inspired by that. That's the
way I get inspired. I hate working things out. I
don't like that at all. I just don't work things out.

(07:41):
I like the spawning Eddie and listen to something for
the first time, and and and let the emotion just
flow and let it go and be a chanler. I'm
actually the exact same way. That's how you get inspired.
So let's just soon the vocal is cut. You don't
want to hear it until you're in the studio with
the guitar strapped on, ready to play. Correct. Okay, And

(08:06):
let's say in one song, how long is it gonna
take you to work out what you're gonna play and
lay it down. Not very long. So we do piece
things together sometimes and I'll get hit with something and
play something in the engine will say that was a
good look you did three takes ago, or if it's
not completely say let's say another one, and then we

(08:26):
put them all together. So that's the way we do it.
The same thing with vocals. Okay. So if I if
you laid down a lick and it was a half
hour later, the engineer said, play that lick again. Could
you remember it and do it? Probably not? If you
pleasure to me, I could probably duplicate it, But to remember, no,
it comes and goes, but it comes about as fast.

(08:48):
I mean it goes about as fast it comes, So
there you go. I have always approached I have always
approached sessions the same way. So when we were learning
a song and the old days, we learned it together
at the same time, heard it for the first time,
and the and the writers, we weren't there the night before.
You used to we would write songs the night before

(09:09):
we cut them. Today you might write a song and
it might be two years before it gets cut. You
just don't know what's gonna happen today. It's certainly different now.
In the old days we're talking about pre internet, you
would have made this record. There was a limited number
of records, and everybody would have been aware of it,
whether it was successful or not, depending on what was
in the grooves. Today you can put out a record

(09:29):
and almost nobody can know about it. How does that
affect your inspiration to do it? You just do it
one at a time, and uh, you know, when you're
when you're overdubbing something or listening to something, you treat
it as the only song on the planet at the time.
And there's only two singers that I've ever worked with.

(09:50):
The singer song as though it was gonna be the
last song they would ever sing. Otis reading for number one,
Number two, rods shuret even though and I I refer
to Rod the fact that he knew that he would
take the track home that night and change the lyrics,
change the idea or whatever, and knowing that for the

(10:11):
musicians in the studio at the time, he would sing
it as though he was on live on stage for
the last time. I've always been how did you get
hooked up with Rod Stewart through Tommy Dodd? Okay, so
that of course makes a question, how did you know
Tom Doubt? I don't think we have a month or

(10:34):
a year to do this, but how did I know
Tom Doubt? Atlantic was our distributed stacks and he was
a vice president or in our director for a long time,
then became a vice person and okay, I've known him
since since sixty three, let's put it that way. Okay,
So right now you're in Nashville, Yeah, okay, why Nashville?

(11:00):
You you grew up in Memphis, you were in California
for a while, You're in Nashville. Why these different places? Well,
I was asked by some friends of mine to come
here and write some songs, and I said no. Then
I met my present wife. This June will be thirty
thirty two years that I've been married to her. And
I met her in this town and I was she

(11:20):
was up here from Dallas. She was living in Dallas
and I was living in l A at the time,
and so I took her out to l a show
to the house and she said, I'd rather have a
house in Nashville. Okay. So we've raised two kids and
head place. Wow, it's hard to say that that I'm
in in the music city of the world. And it's
hard to say that I didn't come here for the music.

(11:42):
But I didn't here because of my present So was
it was? It loved first sight? Absolutely? Did Did she
feel the same way or did you have to work?
I think so, except she tells it a little different
that she didn't. The good news is she didn't know
who I was, and she said, all another one one hit.
Wonder Then she found out letter that I had written

(12:07):
more than one song. So you've been married thirty years,
you have two kids, what are they up to? Well,
one of them is has our own merchandising company and
the other one is in college. That I put him
on the plane yesterday to fly back to Fort Collins.
He's going to Colorado State in four columns Colorado and
he'll be home back here from school. Let's out, which

(12:30):
is the end of my I think? And how many
times you've been married twice? And do you have kids
from your first marriage? I do older kids. And how
how many of you have and how old are there?
I have another boy and another girl, the boy being
the oldest. Then what are they up to? I said

(12:51):
that my my son is retired. My daughter works for
Ashley Furniture. Wow. And are they on the payroll or
totally independent? She is? And he he rant managed a
bookstore for a long time and he decided not to
He's he overmarried too. He married a girl in Memphis
that's head of the card services, and they transferred to

(13:14):
her to Atlanta, and that's where he went to college.
So he's very happy to be back in Atlanta. He
loves it. Okay, so you're in Nashville, and you've did
a lot of early work in Memphis. You grew up
in Memphis. Most people have not been to those places.
They say, oh it's Tennessee. Having been to those places,

(13:36):
I experienced them is radically different. Would you say the
same the two cities. Yeah, uh, totally musically inclined and otherwise.
Memphis is a melting pot. Now, Nashville gets a lot
of people here too, from Kentucky in different places, but
Memphis gets at all Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri. So they

(14:02):
get a lot of entitled an album one time called
Melton Park. And that's been going on since way a
long time ago, when the river boats were gambling boats
or so forth. Wow. Yeah, people don't realize that when
you're in Memphis, you look over the river, it's Arkansas.
You don't realize that it's just that close. Never Mississippi,

(14:23):
just down south. Okay, So what age were you at
when you moved to Memphis ten years old? And where
were you the ten years before that? Missouri? Some people
call it Missoury. Just a state with three names Missouri, Missouri,
and Missouri. And there's say, misery, Why do you call
a Missoury? I said, obviously you didn't grow up on
a farm. So where was this farm in Missouri? Well,

(14:48):
it's not too far. If you know where West Plains
is and there and that those places. It's not in
the Booth Hill. It's in the southern part, right in
northern Arkansas or southern Missouri. The line is not too far,
thirty miles away, I guess something like that at the most.
But it's uh. It's it's just uh west of the

(15:08):
Booth Hill. And your father was a farmer. He was
originally uh, and then he met my mother at teacher's college,
and uh. He was a teacher, and so was my mom.
The thing about me was very simple. They didn't have
babysitters in those days. There was no work to and
we didn't have any close relatives that she could drop

(15:29):
me off at. So she put me to school. I
was full when I started a month later. I was five,
So you know, I started when I was five years old.
The thing was, my mother told me, I don't know
this to be a fact. She said, I did as
good as the registers. She said, I didn't really have
any choice. I had to move you up. So she
took me from the first grade to the second grade

(15:50):
and on to the third grade. Except she's as a
retired teacher, she stayed on the on the teacher's board.
So we moved to West Plains, which was in those
days is if you were raised on a farm. That
was a big town nineteen miles from the farm. And
she put me back. So I took the third grade twice.
I was in the fourth grade for about three weeks

(16:11):
and she said, these city boys are too big for
my son, so she put me back. What kind of
student were you? I did pretty good until I started
playing guitar. I was a straight AS student, and I
spent most of my time playing the guitar instead of studying,
so my grades went down a little bit. I started

(16:32):
making season bees, right, And what your parents? They were teachers?
What did they say about that? They didn't like it
very much, but they never discouraged me in the guitar playing.
And I remember I never thinked. People would ask me,
why what do you think last night, which was the
song that we had number three in the world, Uh,

(16:54):
why was it such a hit? And I said, I
don't know, but I do remember that my mother the
first time I played on the record, she started doing
a twist. I said, well, I guess it was the
first twist instrumental. That's the thing. I com credit it
to Dad at that at that at that so your
parents were supportive did they understand the level of success
that you achieved. I don't not until later. No, And

(17:19):
how were you were you an only kid or with
other kids in the family. I was the only one,
So I remember the time. I do remember this. My
dad came home. We were eating dinner, and he looks
up and he says, I've been transferred to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
We're moving to Tulsa. And I said I'm not and
he looked at me very sternly and said, so you
don't have a voice in this conversation. I said, yes,

(17:39):
I do. I've got a working band making money. And
he said, oh okay. He said, well I've got to go,
and he did. And my mom stayed until I graduated
from high school. And uh they found a duplex to
put me in that that sort of thing. But Dad
went ahead to Tulsa. He was gonna put me in
Oklahoma State, in the Norman Oklahoma and uh, I said,

(18:03):
I don't you know, but you'll be going to Oklahoma
State much better than Memphis. And said, uh, I want
the band. That's all I care about. The thing is
that on my entrance to x AM, I failed the
English part, but I raised it so high in the
math part, they let me take the take it over,
and I did it with There was a girl that
took it over to There was only two of us,

(18:24):
and she had already had two years of pre college
and she failed it as well, and that's why she
got to take it again. Of course we passed it secondary.
So go ahead, no, no, you continue. Well, I was
gonna say that. I got reprimanded one time for calling
it Memphis State. It always was. Now it's Memphis University.

(18:48):
And so my daughter's golf coach said, Steve, it's Memphis
University's something infish state anymore. I said, It'll always been
in the state as far as I'm concerned. So, m
my daughter played the high school college of golf, came
out of pretty good golfer. So how good a golfer
are you? Well? I used to be pretty good at

(19:09):
my age terrible, but I played with a lot of
guys in the nineties and all, and I said, well,
when I grow up, that's what I'm gonna do. You know,
you don't go on the road for fifty years and
been over like you used to. So, uh, people have
back trouble. Everybody does. And so I waited and waited
and waited to until I had some time off to

(19:30):
get my back work on. And the doctor said, Steve,
I can't help you anymore. So what do you mean
you can't help me? He said, because three and four
years together, and I'm telling you, when you've been over
it's like having or two before in your back. I
can't bend over and pick up anything anymore, and never
could anybody. Well, it's funny because you're the first person
who ever told me a similar story. I have back

(19:50):
problems too for fifty years, and I had to get
an injection. I used to get him in. The guy
who did the injection said, who did your surgery? Who
few is the disks? Yeah? So, uh, of all people,
Peter Jacobson was a pretty good friend of mine, still
is and he is one of the chief investors in

(20:12):
the Backs Clinic down in Florida. And he said, if
you have back trouble, I'll put you the head of
the line and you get in there. So my doctor said,
we can't shooting anything in there. I can't cut him apart.
They fused together. So that's what the m R. I showed.
And so I suffer with it absolutely Okay, So what

(20:34):
major parents move from Misery to Memphis. I well, it
had to be my dad getting a job he was on.
We moved from the farm to West Plains, Bressouri because
he was on the police force, filled out an application
of the railroad and and got picked up as a
railroad detective immediately. And that's when we went to Memphis.

(20:57):
And I remember right before we crossed the Mississippi, my dad.
I was asleep in the back seat. My dad wiggled
me up and he said, so you better get up.
You might want to see this. And it was a
river a mile wide. You know, I grew up on
rivers and strangers that I've never seen anything that big
in my life. It's amazing. So your father was a teacher,

(21:18):
then he was a railroad cop, and then he was
a teacher with the FBI for years. Really. Yeah, on
the good side, what kind of relationship did you have
with your dad? Very good relationship. And uh, I never
met anybody that ever said anything negative by my dad,
And everybody really liked my dad. He was just nice

(21:40):
to everybody. And I didn't even know my dad had
a sense of humor. But when the when some of
the boys would come over from from high school and
all he would start telling Jockson said, I didn't know
my dad could do that. He'd have everybody's stitches. And
that's just the way he was. But he was also
very serious, had a serious Uh as he got older. Uh,

(22:02):
he could have made a lot of changes and things,
but he didn't. He didn't. He didn't but end anything.
He just said back and listen. So, so you moved
to Memphis at age ten. That's a hard transition for
a kid to go from one school to another, making friends,
et cetera. Yeah, it's like going to Disney World for
the first time. So what was it like for you?
Pretty amazing. I mean everything that I looked at and

(22:24):
saw her her was was a shock treatment and I
just dealt with it. And uh, he was talking about
best friends. Donald Duck Dunn and I met on a
softball field one in the sixth grade, so we were
out well in the tenth or level. We were sophomores
and juniors when we started a band, and we got
real good in our sophomore year and we were doing
proms and you know, local stuff, and it's very simple.

(22:47):
We played music of the day that kids could dance to.
We played a lot of dances, socops and dances and
palms and so forth. And uh, we played the music
that they could dance to. Obviously they couldn't afford the
real artists. It's too expensive for him. Even in those days,
it was expensive today. I don't know how they deal

(23:08):
with it. It's amazing. I know what we make as
a Blue Brothers. I know what we make as a band,
and there's a there's a ceiling, and there's a we
don't go any lower than a certain price, even on
an off night. That's gonna cost you this much. Well,
when you do that, you know the the artist is
one thing. Then you gotta deal with the back line
and all that. If you can get it donated, that's great.

(23:30):
If you can't, he's got to shell it out. So
he's into your profits. And I would never be a promoter.
There's no way. Listen, it's a license to lose all
your money. It's just crazy. Okay, so you're in Memphis.
At what point do you start playing the guitar? But
around fourteen? And what's the inspiration? That's a good question.

(23:54):
I really don't know. I guess radio here and here
in the radio and seeing people happy, dancing and all
that kind of stuff. And that's what this record is
all about. Two Fired Up. It's all about fired up
and get to get the dancing again, feel good music.
I'm twelve years younger than you, and in my generation
people picked up the guitar to play folk songs in

(24:16):
the early sixties and then the Beatles hit, everybody got
an electric guitar. When you were starting, what was on
the radio? What was the inspiration that made you want
to play music? Well, that's a good question, but I
first heard gospel at that age, and that blew me away.
I had never heard gospel music before, just happy, good

(24:36):
feeling music. So I think I'm guilty of taking u
gospel grooves and turning it into you know, lyrically love
songs basically, or different things like that. So you're fourteen,
you get a guitar. What guitar do you get? I
found one that I liked out of a Serision Rollbuck catalog.

(24:59):
That's silvertone. That's silvertone, flat top, sunbursts, round hole, flattop.
Did you have one where the case had the ample
fire in it? No, that was a big thing of
the thick. But my dad, bless his heart, And I
told you he never discouraged me. He said, son, you
learned how to play that, and I'll buy you a
good guitar. Wow. Well he bought my first electric guitar

(25:22):
from a guy who had one for sale, and the
amp came with it. And I still have that app today. Well,
I don't have that app anymore. It's Smithsonian. But okay,
what was the guitar and what was the app? Uh?
The guitar was a Birdland cut Away or not? Wasn't
the bird Landers one seventy five got the bird Land letter.

(25:42):
It was a one trapeze bridge thin about thin body,
sharp cut away sunbursts. And the app was a Fender Harvard. Wow,
that really was on green onions. That was on green
onions and a bunch of otus reading and of other things.
And when I wanted that sound, I always pulled that

(26:03):
amp out and I still have it today. I had
it until I gave it, specially in a few years ago. Okay,
so there's the Harvard and the Princeton. The difference is
the Princeton has we verb? Is that it or reverse? Well,
I don't own a person. I've used it to tune
up with backstage when they have one. But I've never
owned one, the thunder Harvard. I've owned three since then.

(26:24):
None of them sound like this one that I had.
I don't know what I knew the difference in the sound,
but the quality was just unbelievable. And Tom Dad, we
missed it earlier. He always wanted me to take that
on the road. I said, Tommy didn't put out enough.
He said, just mike it and running through the sound system.
I never did do that, but I could have so.

(26:47):
Certainly back in the sixties and seventies when I was
into it, you go to the guitar shop, even if
it was the same model, they all sounded different. Was
that your experience then in his that you experienced still today? Well,
I think so. I will tell a quick story and

(27:07):
this I love the story, and it was validated. I
did a podcast too for a while, and uh, the
guy was interviewing and said, you know, I've told you
a story about Chad Atkins. He said, I was the
owner of that guitar shop. So he said, chat you
used to come around and look at the guitars on
the wall and all light he pulled them down and
start planning it. So this kid comes running up and said, man,

(27:31):
that's a great sound of guitar, and Chet takes it,
hangs it back on the wall. It says, how's the
sound now? That's a good story. That's a good story.
I love that one. That that blows me away. I
wouldn't have had guts enough to do the how's it
sound now if he just said If he had come
up and said, man, you're a great guitar player, that
would have been a different answer. But he said, man,

(27:52):
that's a great sound of guitar now. And I got
to beat Chad a few times, and uh, I figured
you get around, asked me, hadn't asked me yet? Who
who are my influences? I listened to Less Paul and
said actors like everybody else did. And I said, the
world doesn't need another Less Paul or to actings or B. B.

(28:12):
King or another of those guys. So I started pattern
what I did after a guy named Loman Paul and
who was the leader and guitar player for the Five Royals.
And that's some music. I grew up on dancer too.
I think a lot of people today don't even know
who the five Royals were not and uh Betty LaVette,
who was on a dedicated album, she said she dated

(28:34):
Loman's brother and they always want to be the Royals.
I'll go, okay, be the Royals. That's sort of like
the Royals. Sounds like a sports team. But if you
say Royal's that's big, that's enormous. It's just spelled. It's
spelled the same bit pronounced a little bit different. The Royals. Yeah, man,
I hear from her all the time. I'll have to

(28:56):
ask her about that story. So, okay, you're playing in
the being when you playing? Okay, your fourteen, when you
get a guitar, when do you start forming the band?
Let's see fourteen is when I was about sixteen. And
how did that come together? You say me, Well, there

(29:16):
was another guy in school, Charlie Freeman, Charles Freeman, who
was more into jazz than I was. But he was
taking the guitar lessons and I wasn't. My family couldn't
afford the guitar lessons. So when he his mom would
pick him up at school on the day he had
his lessons. I would run home and get my guitar
and be sitting on his front porch whenever he got
home from his lesson, and he would showing me what

(29:38):
he learned today, and I would stay and play behind
him so he could practice what he had learned. And
that seemed to work out pretty good. He went on
to further his career in jazz and all. And uh,
there was a guy named Mashew Skipper who had a
jazz band. And I don't know where Mashey was from.
I think he was from Arkansost, but I'm not really sure.

(29:58):
And uh, I remember, but Charlie went off with him
and did it a two up in Canada in a
bunch of places. And uh, he was the other guitar
player in the Marquees, so we always had if one
of us couldn't make it didn't matter, you know. But
he played with us at the in clubs and so forth. Now,
how much did you practice? Were you one of those

(30:19):
guys sitting in your bedroom for hours working it out? No?
I wish I had it, but I didn't. I still
look today, I come off the road, I put it
in the corner and I picked it back up, and
we'll go back on the road again. It's kind of
a silly way to look at things, but I never did,
and as I'm self taught, and I learned by doing.
You learn in the studio. So can you read music?

(30:42):
Not at all? Not enough to hurt my plan. So
you're playing in the Marquees, how do you end up me?
How do you end up recording? Uh? I guess because
we I was on for the dance songs and all
that sort of stuff, And I remember the first session

(31:04):
I did it. Son Scotty Moore had me come in
and double an upright bass and that's when the transition
was happening and recording and for those who could afford offender,
it sounded like you're playing with a pick. So I've
overdubbed the baritone guitar down electoral baritone that I played
with a pick, just like a guitar six strang and
it it wasn't a bass guitar. It was a baritone guitar.

(31:26):
So it was an oxic below a guitar, but it
was you could get it low and really pop the
upright bass, so you know the upright basically doom them
tom and you played with a pick and double and
get it right, and it sounds like an offender. Well
wait a second here, you're in Memphis, you're playing in
a high school band. How do you end up knowing

(31:48):
Scotty Moore and recording its son? Well, that's that's I
don't know, that's weird. I got I got a call,
that's all I know. And I remember the first time
I got called to plays session. I asked, Chips moment
I knew, you know, he was the engineer at Stacks
and whatever helping. Jim stirred and I said, Chips, I've

(32:09):
been asked to play on a session. What I played?
He said, just play what you feel. If they don't
like it, they'll tell you they don't like it. And
they asked you to play what they want. When I
hear you play otherwise, he said, if they like it,
then you just keep playing what you're playing. And that's
what I did. And I'll always give him the credit
for teaching me about the unwind G string. You can
bend it better, because all guitar strings in those days

(32:32):
and the best words were the Gibson Cinematics, and they
came with a wound G string and that was very
very hard to bend. I mean, it was very extremely
hard to be in but you could do it and Uh,
you know when I started using we used a B
string in those days because you couldn't buy gauge strings. Wow,
that's those are the That was a big breakthrough. When

(32:53):
they have the later games strings, that's for sure. So
you go to Scotty Moore. When do you start recording
as the Marquees? Wow? Well. Charles Acton came to me
one day and he said, I understand you have a
good man. I said, I'd like to think so, but
you know, he said I want to be in your

(33:13):
band and said you do what? He plays a saxophone.
I said, how long you've been playing? He said, man,
I've been taking lessons for three months. And somewhere in
that conversation he said his uncle on a recording studio.
That was Jim Stewart. I went, okay, can you show
up for rehearsal this Saturday. Come to find out, Jim
had some recording equipment in his garage in North Memphis,

(33:37):
but he had built a little sound booth. I guess,
put the singer isolated. The singer put some carpet down
on the concrete and that's what he called the studio.
So the first studio that was it was still satellite.
It wasn't stack ship was in Brunswick, Tennessee, about ten
miles out of town, now very you know minute ride
out there. And then Chips came to Jim and said, Jim,

(34:00):
there's this Capital theater building, an old movie theater that's
up police and I think we can get it if you,
if you want it. And Jim didn't have the money,
so he goes to a Stell and it Stell says
a Stell action. So Stuart Jim start st and action
A X S T A X. That's what they come
up with stacks. But anyway, uh, she said, I'll lend

(34:23):
you the money. I'll mortgage my home and lend you
the money, but you're gonna have to give me a
record shop. And that's where satellite records came came to pass.
And so there was nothing legally wrong with having satellite records,
but you couldn't have a record out the satellite leavel
because he got a season assists a letter from some
lawyers in California, so that you know, a satellite records

(34:44):
already exists, but a satellite record shop didn't matter. So
it's stayed the same, and uh, we had to go
change to the label from satellite to stacks and then, uh,
like all record companies, Stacks had a subsider vote, So
Green Onions came out on vote one oh two. So

(35:06):
I'm told I don't know. I wasn't there on the
other end of the line for this one. But they
said that we don't have time to promote a new
level because you had Atlantic at co, you know, and
every every big label had had an alternative levels so
they can put out more records. And they said, we
don't have time to promote a new label, get that
thing on stacks. So it came out on stack or

(35:28):
something originally Green understood. Okay, if Green Onion was number
one O two one vote, do you remember what was
one oh one? No, I don't properly, Charles Hines or
Nick Charles one or the other. I couldn't remember. Okay,
So you're in, You're in. You know your house? How
far was your house from downtown Memphis? About twenty minutes? Okay,

(35:53):
so was it the Memphis School District though? Oh yeah? Okay.
So Stewart goes into the movie studio a movie theater.
Do you help build him build it? Since you're there
at the ground floor. Well, let's I don't want to
say help build it. But when they took the seats
out of a lot of the boats and come up

(36:13):
from the concrete, so I remember Packy Ashton, Charles Ashton
and myself. We'd take a hammer and knock them back
down into the concrete. That's what we did, or if
there were long enough, we break them off, going back
and forth until I got hot and broke off. Okay,
Needless to say, the original Stacks was torn down. Now
there's a museum that tries to replicate the field. But

(36:35):
what always blew my mind was the floor wasn't flat, No,
it was angle. So what was that like? Making all
these records and it's the same exact angle today it was.
Then What happened was some guys came in the day
before they tore it down. They wanted me to remember
everything I could remember about Stacks when they went to
look at it. Even though it was leveled. The guy

(36:58):
never to build it back. Existing blueprints were still on
file downtown, so they didn't need what I remembered at all.
I remember colors and stuff, but the angle of the
floor is exactly the same facade out fronts exactly the same.
Everything is exactly the same, except some of it is
now a museum. Okay, but I know it's were you

(37:21):
worked all the time. But either one leg was higher
than the other or your toes your heels were higher.
Were you were aware of that when you were working there. Nah,
you didn't deal with that. It was just the saying.
It was up the top and the horns are down
at the bottom, and the piano was down there in
the drum riser. I remember the drum riser. We had
to build a little off angle so the floor of

(37:43):
the drums was flat the drum riser, and it was
only guarded on two sides instead of four. It was
more of a just an ail thing to isolate it.
And I remember piano note broke one time, one of
the strings and it's stuck in the baffled behind the
bass player. WHOA. That was scary for it to hit him.

(38:07):
That had been the end of that, but it broke.
I would never will forget that. That was pretty scary.
M Okay. So you make the record is the Marquees
Jim Steward opens up the big recording studio in the
movie theater. How you end up. How do you end
up getting integrated into that? I don't know, but I

(38:28):
do know this that Jim Stirt hated the band. Stelle
loved the band. Why because her son played saxophone in
the band, right, So she kept pushing the Jim to
record him and we recorded out Brunswick one time and
I still have those tapes. Is pretty bad, pretty amateurish. Uh.
The song last Night was written by a lot of guys,

(38:53):
but the the initial riff was written by Jerry spot Smith,
the piano player in Chips Woman's band. And they were
already they were older than we were, and uh already
had a big gig at one of the big clubs.
I think they were planning of Vapors or somewhere like that.
But anyway, uh so Smoochy was on that session. Chiffs
Woman engineered it and we called the band and I

(39:16):
wanted Duck to play based on it, and they say
I wasn't on the record because there's no guitar and
the record, however, I am on it. I'm playing the
whole note on the organ when Smoochy texas organ solo,
two different, two different solos on the record. So the
night before the evening afternoon before they recorded it. There
was a Friday afternoon. They recorded on a Saturday, packing

(39:38):
and I came up with the dada dada, and I
don't I didn't come up with that whole note on
the intro. So that was something the horns came up
with later. Maybe it was package out did I don't know.
I never did asked buh. That was my idea to
do the drum roule. So we had the drummer from
the plantation in plane and during the show he was

(39:59):
always Jackson played with his hands and people love that
play the drums like hunger drums. And I said, you
know that thing you do, that little show piece. You
do what you do with your hands? He said yes,
said can you do that same with sticks? He said
like this and he played it and I said, that's it.
And that was the intro. That that that that that
that we don't know where things come from. They just

(40:23):
follo out the ceiling and you go forward. Just be
a good channeler. Okay. So he records the marquees, but
then you personally get integrated into the Stax operation, right,
And I do remember the first session I played the
stacks and uh like all guitar players they want to
be engineers. I don't know why. It's just one of
those things, especially in Memphis. That's why Scotti, the combination

(40:48):
of myself going down and playing on Scottish session, he
wanted to be an engineer and he engineered the other
thing that Like, when Green Onions came around, I knew
it was pretty groove. They had no title yet, it
was just tracks, and I had the singer that we
were there to record showed up that day, and we
heard later that he did show up at the record shop,

(41:09):
but he had sang all night the night before. This
is on a Sunday afternoon, and uh, he didn't have
any voice, and so he never came back in the studio.
So we were just playing around, keeping our chops up,
and Jim hit the record button because it was ready
to record, and uh, he said, guys, come up. Listens
you recorded that, So yeah, so we'll come up. We
listened to it. He said, if we decided to put

(41:29):
something like this out, do you have anything else you
could put on the flip side? In those days of
the A side of bisade. So we just were dumbfounded.
We said we didn't have anything and I got to
thank and I said, book or you remember you played
me a roof about two weeks ago. You thought it
would be really good for vocal song? He said, I
don't remember, but come down to the organ. I'll play
a couple of roots. You tell me if, I said,
and he played the green engin and said, that's the

(41:50):
one right there. So how long did it take to
record Green Onions third tap? And did you know what
you have? No? I just knew it was good. I
knew it was danceable, and so I took it to
Scotty Moore, who at that time was running the lathe
and Elvis's contract was Samitory sold. Elvis's contract had a

(42:12):
lot of money, so he bought a lathe that was
very much unheard of it. All the maston came out
of Nashville, out of where we're setting now, in the
same studio. Uh, in those days, and uh, I don't
think this building was built still sixty four, so that
was a year. We had the Green Onions in sixty two,
I think it was, but it was mastered up here

(42:35):
and uh, chips, I remember wanting me to play on
a session. You wanted to engineer it and it was
Prince Connelly I'm Going Home was it was the title
of the song. Brought up a chip shutter to me
young guitar and I duplicated played And that was my
first session at sax Okay back at that level. Was

(42:57):
it one or two track mono? Yeah? Mono? So was
there any you know they laid it down? Were there?
It was there any so called mixing, any effects added after? No,
just the way it was recorded. In those days, you
mixed a song the way it was gonna be sounded

(43:18):
on the record. Basically, the engineer tried to do that
since it was mono, so any echo and any effects
had to be done at the time. So Green Onions
is cut. How long after you cut it does it
hit the market? Well, that's a good question. I don't remember.
That could have been more than a than a month,

(43:39):
several weeks, I guess. And do you remember the first
time you heard it on the radio? No? But I
do Green Onions. I was there, That's why I know.
But and all I had was that dub that that
Scotty had made me, and I took it to a
friend of mine, Ruben washing On w l Okay had
the drive time and the reason I used to go

(44:01):
there my wife at the time was working for Celia
Mattress Company. I drop her off at her gig at
seven o'clock and I'd be it at the radio station
about seven torenty or whatever, and I always got in.
Reuben and I were really good friends, and so that's
where he got started. And I said, I want you
to hear something we cut Sunday. I had scott This
was on a Tuesday morning, and I had I said,

(44:22):
I had Scotty cut me a little doub on this
thing yesterday, so tell me what you think. He's a
disc jocket, so he would know. And he plays the
intro and about two bars and stops it, backs it
up and I said, you don't like it, and he said, no,
it's good. I just want to make sure I heard
what I heard. I said, okay, but I didn't know.
He put it out on the air and the phones
lived up all I was playing. That's how that record

(44:43):
got broke. By playing on the on the radio. People
calling said I don't know what it is. He said,
I don't know what it is. We're gonna find out,
and then the phone ring again. I don't know what
it is, we're gonna find out and it becomes a
national hit and you're a young guy. What is that
experience like? Well, it's overwhelming, but it's all your dreams

(45:06):
come come together real quickly. So everything you thought about
happens very quickly. And we were in such de man,
it was amazing. And I the thing with green onions
already had experienced that with the last night. We did
a tour of the United States, the Atlantic sort of

(45:27):
Father or whatever, and we did Dick Clark. We were
on Dick Clark and uh, unfortunately that's one of the
tapes that got erased. Before you get a get a
judge to give her, don't do that. They were taking
all of his old kide scopes and destroying them because
they wanted to make more room. So Dick Clark himself

(45:48):
in those days, he finally got a judge to rule
it and make him stop. So and I went to
he was a friend of mine. I went to Dick
and I said, did you still have the a tape
of the markets and we're on your show? He said, non, Steve,
that was one of the ones that got destroyed and
get out of here. So there's no record of it,

(46:10):
and uh, there may be one up in Canada because
there's a TV show. We did it up there one time. Okay,
that was the sixties through the lens of today. Everybody
would ask. The first question they would ask it. I'm
not saying it's right, but it's the first question they
would ask would be about the money. So did you

(46:30):
ever make any money on Green Onions? Absoluteness still do today,
But that was not why we cut it. That was
not why I picked up the guitar warts to make money.
I mean, if you're good at what you do, you're
gonna make money out of it, I think. And if
you don't, you just keep going until you do. Okay.
A couple of questions here. You were going to Memphis State.

(46:53):
Did you graduate from Memphis State? No? I went two
years and we had green Onions, So I quit. I said,
I can always go by, and I never went back.
And what'd your parents say when you quit? I guess
he knows what he knows what he's doing, because I
convinced him I was gonna go back whenever all this
was over, and they never did stop. Okay, So Green Onions,

(47:15):
you tell the story, you go to the radio station.
You talk about a woman. Were you married to her
at that point? Uh? Yeah, whens were done. Okay, let's
be honest here, all your dreams come true. You go
on the road with a hit record. You know, there's

(47:35):
a lot of perks of being on the road. You
take an advantage of the perks. I don't know. That
was not again, that was not a purpose baby. We
did it was influenced by some of them, but that
was not the real orison we did it. Okay, So
there wasn't a lot of womanizing and drugging out there, No,

(47:56):
not at all with that. Then, Okay, let's go back
to Memphis at this time. What was it light between
the races in the fifties and sixth Well, basically, there
was no color in those days. Now, when you read
the history books, it says Memphis was the most segregated
town in the South. And it might have been. I
don't know, but it was something we all just took

(48:17):
for granted. I didn't look at a book or anybody
being any different color than I was. And that's not
why we did it. We were all there it stacks
as a team and working as a team, and it
seemed like everybody in Memphis was working as a team
because Memphis was the most was credited with being the
most beautiful city in the United States for about eight

(48:39):
years in a row. And I remember doing something in school.
I made a little wishing well and whatever, and it
got first place from the Quanners Club. So there were
and I have said this over and over, there was
never any color that I knew of its stacks. There
might have been later some division, but not not while

(49:00):
we were making all those records. And all that came later.
It came after Martin Ruther King was assassinated. So okay,
what the day that he was assassinated? What was it
like being in Memphis. I wasn't. I was in San Francisco.
The whole band had gone out there a day early
to play at the Fillmore West, and I think we

(49:23):
were supposed to be on the same show with Dina
Ross and the Supremes, who never got on the plane
in Detroit. When I heard about it. We were already
out there. Did the show play? Oh yeah, Now there's
a there's a small story that Bill Graham came to me.
I went to the restaurroom and Bill Graham came in
there behind me, and he said, Steve, I might have

(49:44):
send you guys back to Memphis. We have not sold
a ticket since we heard about that today, so it
really he said, yeah, he said I'm gonna take it.
He said, I'll take care of you, but I can't
pay you what I promise you. I'll pay you, but
I'll get you back to Memphis. And uh, you know
he had to deal with the Jack Tar motel hotel.
What it was, I stated, the Jack Tar and you
stayed there, and uh, Bill Graham always uh to get

(50:12):
off of that story a little bit, I'll get back
to it, uh, Otis when he did sitting on the
dock of the bay. Bill Graham always offered to the
Jack Tar Hotel or his boat house and Sausalita and
Otis decided to stay in the boat house, and that
was validated by new Young. We were out there with
him in ninety three. He was reading a book. So anyway, Uh,

(50:32):
we get we get back to the hotel a motel
and we get a call from the guys at the
Fillmore and they said, get your butts back down here
as soon as you can. There is a line around
the block. So we drive back down there and sure, enough,
there was a line all the way around the block.
Everybody wanted to get in to hear the Book of
Two the MG's. But there was a period during that
day that zero It just went to zero nothing. So anyway,

(50:55):
we had a great show that note night. And I think,
uh one of the bands that Mothers of Invention was
on Earth and I think and uh, I don't even
know who else played that night, but we were minus
the Supremes. Maybe they had a local band play. I
don't know, I don't remember. We played there so many times. Right,
so you go back to Memphis. What's the vibe in Memphis?

(51:18):
Pretty ugly? So things have changed. I can tell you
that the only building left standing in that block where
Stacks was was Stacks. Wow, that was the only one
that didn't torch the bank. We got it. All the
other play all the other buildings, the sandwich shop across
the street, the bakery, all those places, the filling station,

(51:41):
everything was tourist, the liquor store, everything except Stacks. So
it is what it is, Okay, Now today Bull Street
is just a tourist trap. Was Bull Street already over
by time you came of age? Was this still happening?
It was still happening, and what was it like now

(52:02):
some of the streets were redeemed like Rufus, Thomas Boulevard
and so forth. And they started doing that, and uh,
the music notes with people's name on it came way later.
I don't know when they started that, but you know,
they're still doing it as far as I know. So
would you go hang out there and go to the
go to the clubs? Now? What we did when I

(52:26):
was in high school, we used to drag that place.
In other words, we we'd go by the Hippodrome and
places like that and roll the windows down and drive
real slow so we could hear Ray Charles's music or
whenever they came to town, James Brown or BB who
it was performing and we could hear it. So that
was a place that you went to the Pond shops
on Saturday and you looked through the window and you went, oh,

(52:48):
you're just dreaming at those guitars and stuff, and say,
then I liked on one of those one of these days.
It was a wish factory basically, and there were still
guys on the corner selling pencils and and their thing.
And it was a great place to hang out and
what about the Duke Joints? And I've been through Memphis
and people have pointed them out, But was that a
factor something you were aware of back then? No? The

(53:13):
hippodrama named the Handy Club was another one. Uh Courage
Tropicana was way outside. It wasn't outside of the city,
but it was away from Bill Street. And I don't
remember very many club has been down on Bill Street.
The Landscape Brothers was there where it was bought his
suits and the mgs did too, But that was or

(53:37):
Elvis was earlier, way before us. Were you ever bothered
that it was Booker T and the MG's that your
name wasn't in the band? No? Done horse. However, so
when Jim found out what had happened that day and
Mrs Ashton, I want walked into the record shop, you know,

(53:59):
just my normal gig at nine o'clock, got to be
there by nine. She said, there's a lot going on.
I bet you're responsible, and I said, I held up
the devil. I said, you're not talking about this. The
phone was running off the wall before I got there.
What did I just hear on the radio to day?
I want to buy it? Nobody knew what it was.
So I still called Jim and he was working at
the bank. Still working at the banks, she said, will

(54:20):
you take your lunch break. You better get down to
the studio because there's something going on you need to
know about. So when he was told what was going on,
he said, we gotta get the guys in for emergency session.
We gotta come up with a name for the song
in a name for the group. And that's what we did.
Was everybody was there with Louis Stainberg and Al Jackson, Booker, team, myself. Okay,
then how did you come up with the names? What

(54:42):
Green Unions? A book of both Booker came up because
Booker it was a book of things. Booker came up
with that idea. But you know, even though we all
shared in the writers of it, we did. But uh,
Louis Stainberg, the bass player, said, let's name it onions.
Why would you want to name and onions? He said,
because that's the stink of hist music I've ever heard

(55:03):
my life. So I I said, okay, onions is fine,
but think about the negative side of onions. Sometimes onions
made people cry and there's other people indigestion. I said,
what about Green Onions And they said, ah, good idea,
So it became Green Onions. Okay, so the record is
a smash. You go on the road. Now you're back
at Stacks and you're coming back in with a hit

(55:25):
under your under your arm? How do you become integrated
in the scene and working? Uh with Stacks, it's both
an A and R guy and in the studio. Well,
I'm gonna tell my side of the story, which I
know to be the truth. Jimm Third couldn't rebuttle it
if he wants to rebuke it or whatever you call it. So, uh,

(55:47):
we have been very lucky at Stacks with instrumentals, so
they wanted to know all the instrumentals that I had.
They never even asked me. I've been writing lyrics to
song since I was fourteen. Not one time did they say,
have you got any songs? Steve, No, not one. So
I go to Jim Sturt's favorite artist, Carla Thomas, and

(56:08):
I said, Carla came to the record shop. I said, Carla,
can you come back in the back. I've got an
idea for a song I think you're gonna love. There
was no time to lose, and she says Steeve. That's great.
So she went to Jim and said, Jim, this Steve's
got a great song. I want to cut it. He said, okay,
if you want to cut it, we'll cut it. And
I started. He said, let me see the lyrics. I
had no time to into O L O O s C,

(56:30):
no time to lose, so I don't think I ever
could spell. I still can't spell, but I know how
to spell lose now. And uh so they cut it.
There was the biggest money making records Ship has since
she was now. They have tried to come up with,
you know, follow ups and all that, had not done

(56:51):
very well with it, but no time to lose. They
played on the radio and their social records and had
a little income on it. So that's pretty good. Okay,
the songs you wrote, who owned the publishing then and
who owns it now? Well, the original masters Universal owns it.
That's the record it was originally the song was East

(57:14):
Memphis Music. Now you know, everything reverted back. It now
owns my share of the publishing. And I came in
one day. I told my wife, I said, I'm getting
ridy to sell something I've never owned. That's the publishing
so primary Way in New York ons it. I see,

(57:35):
So what do you do with the money? Well, I
say about the money, They said, you just made a
Fortunates said, but I don't know, but it keeps me
in golf balls and fishing. Reverse. It's always, you know,
you never know what you can do with the money. Okay,
So now you have success with Carla Thomas, Jim Stewart
must be pretty impressed, I think. So he finally got

(57:56):
around to asking me, did I have any more songs?
Of course I had a bunch. We kept coming up
with him and and hitting and so forth. So Wilson
I wrote Midnight in the Midnight Hour, and there's a
whole story behind that song. And wait, wait, tell the story. Okay.

(58:19):
I didn't know who Wilson Picktt was at all, and
so Mrs Action said, I think he's sang on some
gospel songs. So we're playing him and said, oh, I'm
seeing my Jesus at the midnight I wolf, I want
to wait till the midnight hour, said, that's that guys label,
He's midnight Hour. And he wrote, I'm gonna wait till
the midnight hour to take my girl out. You know
that basically and when there's nobody else, no one else around,

(58:41):
just you and I in the midnight hour. So came
out to be a pretty good idea, I would say,
even though we spread him. He wrote most of uh,
don't fight it, you got the fee you And then
I came up with I'm not tired, Doom, the Doom,
the doomdom. It's just an old gospel groups all that is.
So we wrote three songs at night, cut all three

(59:02):
the next day. All three were chart wricords. Unbelievable, It
is unbelievable. Okay, we're most of your songs written in
collaboration like that, all of them, all except I can
remember one. It was for the Marquees. Everything. I love
to collaborate. That's on the on the way I like

(59:23):
to do it because it doesn't matter what percentage of
something somebody rights. It does if you if three people
writers thirty third if four people, rather just about it
that way pretty simple. And Jim Jim made a decision
that I don't think any studio ever made. If you
played on it, you got a part writers on it.

(59:45):
On instrumentals, wow, not the vocal songs. That was up
to the writers that wrote the song and all that
sort of stuff. Uh. And if the writer wanted to
share it with the artists, that's fine, but he did not.
It wasn't an automatic thing. On instrumentals, it was definitely automatic.
So if you needed a song, would you schedule the

(01:00:06):
equivalent of a writing session or would you have a
recording session and work it out in the studio. Now, well,
we've worked it out in the studio a lot of times,
but most of the songs were written the night before.
So mostly artists that had you know, recording session lined up,
they would fly in the day before that night. We
would get together and right, and this is what I
want you to say, and we'd find the keys and

(01:00:28):
that kind of thing. So then we'd show it to
the band the next morning, starting around uh eleven, I
think most successions started and ended by five. Sometimes they
ended earlier, but they always started no later than eleven o'clock.
Ten eleven o'clock. They were ready to go, and we
would show them what we've written and they would come
up a lot of a lot of the things. We're

(01:00:49):
here to arrange a lot of the stuff, maybe some
of it probably alas actions should have got some writers
on some of the songs that he did because he
set the group for everybody. Everybody to listen to Al Jackson.
He was a drummer, he set the tone for so
he was doing okay with with the boot MGS. He
got of that. So if you really think about it,

(01:01:13):
half goes to the publisher and half goes to the writer,
so that half that fift percent gets divided. That means
that the MGS made twelve of every song that we
ever had is twelve and whatever it is. Yeah, in

(01:01:38):
the midnight hour, as big as Green Onions was, it
was an instrumental, it was in its own category. But
in the midnight hour there was not a band alive.
And this is after the Beatles hit. They did not
play in the midnight hour. Could you realize the success
of that record? No, a little bit. You and I

(01:02:04):
used to get asked how many versions of in Him
that hour was there? I said, I don't know about
have been pedo and over a hundred and fifty world.
So do you get intimidated? You feel, well, I have
this gigantic kid, I might not be able to make
another one. No, I know I should have, but I didn't.

(01:02:26):
And uh, let me tell you a quick story. Eddie
Floyd and I were put together by Al Bell. He said,
I've got this friend of mine who's an artist and songwriter.
I know you guys will hit it off. So I
go to Worston, d C. And I meet Eddie Floyd
and we wrote three or four songs that week and uh,
so he and I are in in the Uh we

(01:02:48):
had written six or four or five, seven, A nine
for Wilson coming in and on his record knock on Wood.
I said, Uh, we knew we had a good song.
You know, you don't think of every being you think
of maybe it's been a hit, but we knew he
had a good song. Could not come up with an intro.
And after about an hour of that, I said Eddie,

(01:03:10):
I wonder what in the midnight hour would sound like backwards?
He said, I don't know, play it. So I played
it backwards. It starts on the D goes dB A
G E A, so I started on E G B
A B d V. Same thing. So I tell people

(01:03:31):
in my show, follow the dots. You want to know
how to write songs and store or something, just follow
the dots. Well, you're mentioning one thing that people don't
admit you really, people, you may not know exactly what
will be a hit, but you know when you do
something great, you can feel it's different from the rest
of the stuff. Well, you feel it as good. It's
better than other things that you've had. Yeah, that much,

(01:03:53):
I don't know about greatness. But I tell us also
that whenever we had a recording session, if we had
three songs on the session, they all got treated with
the same energy, and we didn't know which one was
a hit. Maybe the writers did felt that this was
better than something else they had, But as far as
the backing band, the session band, we treated them all

(01:04:15):
with the same inflection. We treated Uh soul Man exactly
the same what we did the other songs on the
on the date, same thing with Otis and stuff and
all that we didn't know what was hitting to this
press and release and put out there. Then you know
for sure if you have a hit or not. The
difference in Otis rating is he had seventeen in a
row from these arms of mine. Now, a lot of

(01:04:38):
guys can't follow up, but Otis had as far as
R and B is concerned, as far as generating enough
income to say that was a hit. He had seventeen
in a row. But he started off as the road guy.
He wasn't even the singer. Now he was the singer
in the band when he showed up the Stacks and
Johnny Jenkins in the Pine Toppers. The thing is that

(01:05:01):
we were there to record Johnny Jenkins in the Pine Toppers,
who already come off of a hit called Love Twist.
They couldn't come up with a follow up, so it
was Joe Walcotta Jerry Wexter's idea to send him to Memphis.
Maybe they can come up with something, because they really
they they they're good and be doing instrumentals. So when
Otis he wanted me to hear him saying he went

(01:05:22):
to Al Jackson first and Al said, you know, that
big tall guy came up driving the car and I
thought he was a roadie and so that's probably where
you got that from. But he was a singer. And
they told me later that, uh, some something happened with
Johnny Jenkins and he didn't have a light driver's license
at the time, and so he didn't want to get
caught driving a car without a license, so he had

(01:05:44):
orderst So Otis gets out out of the car. We've
watched them pull in front of us. We're standing outside
of the studio waiting for the session to happen, and
they showed up and he pulled on down and he
gets out, unlocks the trunk and started carrying in mikes
and stuff. And I said, man, we got mix and sad.
You don't need to bring those mix as you said
up like it was a gig, right, I said, bring

(01:06:06):
Johnny's guitar and apps whatever you want. But I said,
you don't need neither of mix. Put him back on
the trunk, and that's what he did. So I thought
it was a rotor. So he comes to Ale Jackson
and al I said, you know that guy would come
up driving a car, the big tall guy, and said yeah,
And he said he wants you to hear him saying
I've already told him you only hold the auditions on Saturdays.
Probably the chance that you hear him saying won't happen.

(01:06:28):
So at the end of the session, Jim Schurch send
everybody home early. He said, why don't we just take
off and start again to mar guys. So we did
that and we're back in the back listen to stuff,
and now comes to me, and he said, you know
what I told you earlier about this guy when you
want you to hear him saying? I said yeah. He
said he's driving me nuts. Can you just take five
seconds out of your time and get this guy off
of my back? I said, okay, bring him down to

(01:06:50):
the pian He brings them down and I said, okay,
saying something. He said, I don't. I don't play piano.
Play a little guitar. I don't play piano. Said give
me some of them church courts. Did you play pian
and not enoughing? Just to ride with it? He said,
play me some of the church squads. And he's time
about six eight trips that that that he starts these
arms of mine and I went, whoa, the hair of
my arm litterally stood up. I should stop it right there.

(01:07:12):
He said, you don't like us some men I love it.
But I got Jim Sturch here this so I go.
I knew I would get fired if Jim did. Brushed
me off and said, no, Steve, I'm not doing it,
he said. I said, Jim, you gotta come out and
hear this guy saying you're gonna die. So he did.
He heard it. He said we gotta get this down
on tape. Call the guys back. So Duck had to
remind me in Tokyo one time, the two days before

(01:07:34):
he passed away that I came running out of the
studio and he was putting his base in the tronk
of the car, and I said, get your base back out.
We gotta get this song down. The next morning, we
were cutting a B side for these Arms of Mine,
Hey Baby, or whatever was called, and I Johnny played
guitar on and I played piin on on These Arms

(01:07:54):
of Mine, and as Johnny Jenkins playing guitar a little,
little little. A lot of people don't know that either.
They think us Me and I don't care what they think.
It's it is what it is. If they've read a
book and tell the story, I tell a story about
tell her now that it was john and Jenkins played
guitar on that and I played piano. You don't play piano,
I said, I know that I don't play. Okay. Ultimately,

(01:08:19):
after Otis passes, uh, Dock of the Big comes out.
Now if one listens to Dock of the Bay, you
can hear the fingers on the strings. You know what
I'm talking about? No, I don't. I played guitar on
I played both guitars on that, right, I know. But
you know, maybe it's you know, when you heard it
on I never I never noticed it. You can hear,

(01:08:41):
you know, if your guitar player, you can hear the
fingers moving on the strings. You didn't steer it on
the radio, but on every you know, it's not that subtle. Well,
when we get to today, I'll gonna listen to it
exactly explain what it was. Okay, Now, at this point
in time, you have a number of successes. Los Angeles
is just starting to build up as a recording center.

(01:09:05):
You certainly have New York, you have Nashville, and then
Muscles Shoals is starting to become a thing. To what
degree did you know these other guys or compete with
these other guys who are just in your own world?
I didn't. That was Al Bell's I did farm stuff up.
So he had already started farming sessions up, WORSA, DC, Chicago,

(01:09:30):
l A, and Muscle Shoals. Now Jerry was already aware
of it. And what happened with Jerry Wessler, who was
president out of Atlantic Records. Uh, he knew that these
guys and muscle shows were cutting some good records. So
when Jim Stir decided no more outside recording, I said, Jim,
I'm just on a roll with Wilson Pickett. You know,

(01:09:51):
we've had three hits in a row here. And he said,
like I said to you, no outside recording. I went, oh,
so maybe that was the start of the downfall. I
haven't idea. I don't know. I wasn't that upset about it,
but I was a little upset. We still had a
lot going on. And what we did after the Stacks
vote tour, everybody wanted to be their own producers. They

(01:10:13):
wanted to go on instead of same produced by staff,
they wanted to produced by whoever was in charge of
the session. So that's what we did and the sister Okay. Now,
as years are going by, it's kind of like the
Internet twenty years ago. There's an incredible advancement in recording technology.

(01:10:34):
We go from one to two to four to eight
to sixteen to twenty four tracks. We have boards with
multiple channels to what degree with stocks keeping up with
that into what degree being a guitar player and being
in you know, gear head, to what degree were you
up to speed on all that stuff. Uh, technically, I'm

(01:10:54):
not sure we were speed. We were always behind everybody
in technology. Now. The thing about Atlantic was way ahead
of the game. They had an eight track. There was
two in the world and they had one of them.
So that's what they did. And they, when I say they,

(01:11:15):
I should say that Motown brought in Diana Ross I
brought the four Seasons in different things to do those handclaps,
and that's that great sound that made everybody want to dance.
They would dub it down on eight track at Atlantic
and put all that stuff on it. And Tom Dowb
being a good friend, taught me how he did a
lot of stuff and a lot of the handclaps. We're

(01:11:36):
done with the metal flanges from the reels because they
were more metalic that they sounded more like they just
sounded about it. Well, well, a little bit slower. How
were they done with the reels and the metal flanges. Well,
if you took a real apart, you got this round
metal flange, you get two of them together and clap
it together. What you're saying, I thought that with hands

(01:11:58):
and it sounds like a million hands on it's not.
And the other thing is chay was a board over
a broom handle, one guy with two flanges clapping and
doing his feedback and forth. And if you might it properly,
you can get this big chat sound. And they used
to do and what were you using for weaverb We

(01:12:21):
had our own echo chamber. Originally it was your bathroom
that had these old, uh black and white tiles hex tiles,
just like all the bathrooms. And Jim says that was
the girl's bathroom. It might have been. I don't know,
but one of them was taken up for the record
shop and the other one was still over there. And uh,

(01:12:44):
there was a guy there is a guy here in
town that's doing a book on recording studios, and he said,
how did you send the signal over? I knew the
return of the echo was on the eighth pot, so
of two Ampex mixerers, so it was on one side
or the other. There was know, we didn't have any
pan pots in those days, and you could have spent
the signal. But Jim guy said, maybe you need to

(01:13:05):
ask Jim that Jim couldn't remember how we said it
eire and well to Jatan who built all of that,
he's gone. So he's not around to ask anymore. We
know about the return, we don't know how it was
sent over there. So were you always kind of a
producer or how did you decide you were going to

(01:13:25):
become a producer? M Well, the way I became a
producer there was no one else to do the job.
And I have been asked in the past, how come
there's only one guitar on the sessions because we couldn't
afford a second guitar player. That's why. Pretty simple, And uh,
my job at Stacks as a producer all that. While

(01:13:48):
we're on our subject, Mrs Axon, I had a job
at the record shop and she went to Jim Still
one day and said, you're gonna start paying Steve because
he's spending more time in the studio than his record shop.
So they come up with a deal and Jim started
paying me. And okay, you talk about when everybody becomes

(01:14:11):
an independent producer. At what point do you disconnect from Stacks?
September nine, Well, it must have been a big effect
if you remember exactly what it was. I remember the day,
I remember the day of the time, the day and everything,
So what happened, I don't remember the whole week. But
I remember that day well. I was told I couldn't

(01:14:34):
get out, that you can't leave Stacks, you know, yeah,
And I'm gone by No, you can't leave Stacks. So
I went to Albil, who was by then vice president
of the label, and I went to Al I said, all,
I'm not happy here anymore. I want to go. He said, Steve,
if you want out, I'll help you get out. It's okay.

(01:14:54):
And he did and we got out. I had already
told Jim I said, I'll get my lawyer. I want
to get out of studio. I gotta go. And uh,
there was a great tant transition to go from Stacks
to t M I. They have been working on the
studio for a long time and the owner and uh,
one of my best friends are our lead singer in

(01:15:15):
our band who did a lot of art work on
the album covers and all that for Stacks have been
working with this guy for a long time. And they
come and got me out of bed one night and
said we're gonna show you something. So they showed me
that and they said this is yours if you want it.
That was t M I was a great studio, and uh,
that did I mean that helped, but it didn't really

(01:15:36):
entice me to leave Stacks. That's not why I left Stacks.
What I did tell Al and Uh and Jim start,
I'm not gonna leave Stacks and going across the street
in competition with you. I'm not doing that. I'm gonna
make a different kind of music. I'm not gonna make
R and B music anymore. And so Al says, well,
I've got this artist I need you to do. You've
already agreed to do it. And Uh, he said, you're

(01:15:58):
doing real good with Eddy Floyd. You're not gonna stop
doing that. So I recorded them at him. Okay, a
couple of a couple of questions here online It says
you were an A and R guy for Stacks. Is
that accurate? Yeah? So did you ever sign things? Or

(01:16:18):
we're talking about it was so loose. Someone come in
and you say, hey, this is a good guy. Well,
I know, I don't think I ever signed anybody. Uh.
It happened most of it by accident. I can't tell
you this. I don't ever remember telling somebody becoming famous
that I said. I listened to her said they're not
gonna happen. That never happened as far as I can remember.

(01:16:41):
So you have great ears. So how did you decide
you weren't gonna make R and B music anymore? Well,
I knew I couldn't get out if I said I
was going to Carcion Cita Buld competition. So at this
I'm just following the footsteps of Lincoln, Wayne Moment, Chips Bowman.

(01:17:02):
He started doing. He did the Sweden inspirations, he did
King Carters, Elvis and uh However and writers a bunch
of guys. You know. He did Neil Neil, not Neil
sadaka Neil Diamond Diamond. So you go, at this point
in time, not only is the Memphis sound famous, not

(01:17:23):
only Stocks famous, you were individually famous. And the way
people read the credits on the records in depth, so
I would assume from around the world people are contacting you,
they want to work with you. Okay? Is that what
happened when he went to work? Pretty much the thing.
The thing is, I left him. I made a production

(01:17:46):
deal with Columbia Records. I didn't leave to him. I
left Stacks and and made a deal with the Columbia
Records And at the time, Clive Davis, the President, and
he kind of took me in and he wanted to
make sure that you know, I was on his team,
and I was, so I did a lot of the
thank The first artists he sent me was a band

(01:18:06):
called Dreams. Very successful with that. Then we did Jeff Beck. Okay, okay, wait,
wait forget whatever his personality is, and one on one
he not really the public personality anyway. But of all
of them, we'll leave you out of this because we're talking.
I consider Beat to be the best, better than Hendricks,

(01:18:29):
better than Jimmy Page, as I say, not the greatest
songwriter in terms of player, unbelievable. So what did you
think of working with Jeff Beck also being a guitar player?
It was a treat, big treat. The thing I can
say about Jeff as a guitar player, I would watch him.
I was sitting next to him, and I'll go, you know,

(01:18:50):
I'm not the world's worst guitar player, but I know
you can't get that there in that position. He did
whatever was in his head. He just played. The thing
about if is that as his career went, as he
got older, he got better, better, better, better and better,
except he'll never top going down that's one of the
best versions that's ever been done. I think Going Down.

(01:19:13):
Don't believe me, I know it fantastic. And I think
Bobby Chense I didn't know at the time and I
was producing Bobby that he was a great rock guitar player.
I had no idea that he played guitar. I just
knew him as a good singer. And it was a
Jeff Beck group. They called it, I think at the time.
Next Building played piano, Coos and Power played drums, and

(01:19:34):
claud Shaman played the bass, and Bobby Chance singing and
Jeff played that incredible guitar. Wow. I mean, I think
the album as a whole was pretty Yankee. I don't
think Jeff was very proud of the album, but he's
got to be proud of Going Down. That is amazing.
So what was your production technique? How involved were you?

(01:19:55):
Were you type of guy who would were arrange, type
of guy change the songs. Youre the type of the
guy just sit behind the board, not interfere too much.
I have no idea, but I do know this. I
have told many people, if I knew what made me
who I am, I'd bought it and give it to everybody.
I have no idea. I was just there at the
time and it worked. The thing I say about producers,

(01:20:16):
you gotta be able to hear something finished. You can't
just get lucky and stair step it and get lucky
each time you do something. You gotta hear it finished.
And you worked for that goal. I think now another
being you worked with. It was un epic, but part
of the whole uh CBS enterprise was Poco. That it
doesn't seem like anything could be further from your wheelhouse

(01:20:38):
than Poco, all right, And recently I got to see
Richie Farrey again for the first time since Poco and
Timothy I have seen. You know, he's out with the
Eagles and I knew his time. I don't know whatever
happened to Paul Cotton. The only hit out of that
album that I did was Railroad Days by Paul Cotton,
and I think Richie knows that. And Richie Farrey at

(01:21:00):
the time was the writer and they had just split up.
Him and Jimerson has split up and uh he has
fit up with his wife as well. It was writing
all these great love songs, but that's all it was
with love songs, and I don't think Polko was known
for love songs. So I told Clive that okay, and

(01:21:20):
put the album out anyway, and you know, we had
railroad days. It's number one record was pretty good. That
was all we had out of that. And another thing
happened with looking Glass, I think with Ell Litt Laurie
looking at us. And so I'm up in New York
at the time, and they said, we got this group
who wants you to go here? So I did. They

(01:21:41):
came back the next day and I'm sitting down and
cloud he said, well, they have any hits. I said,
they got one Brandy. He said, well, let's take him
down to Memphis. You cut him and see what you're
gonna said. He called me about four days into the session.
He said, how's it going. I said, going pretty good.
She says, uh, if you got any hits, I said,
one Brandy. He said, would send them back to New

(01:22:01):
York then, And so they, I don't know, they think
I had something to do with it. I had nothing
to do with that, with him going back. But here's
what they did. They got an engineer to work for nothing.
They went in at midnight or late in the evening
and recorded Brandy the same way. We didn't head anbaring
record with it great. I'm proud of proud of them.

(01:22:24):
I heard that in Woodstock. I heard them do it
Brandy and it was hit. Then there's still a hit.
So I heard on the radio. I go, man, that
was a hit. So okay. So how long Needles Sway
Clive gets blown out of CBS uh and how long
does it last for you with t M I what's

(01:22:44):
the next step for you? Well, the guy that signed
us to Columbia whole mrs ever't doesn't matter. Um, he
was booted out of Columbia because of indifferences or something.
I think what it was. He was part on over
a building they were keeping the records in as a
as a wherever storage place. He couldn't do that. So

(01:23:09):
the guy was in partnership with came to me one
day answered, we're moving over to our c A. So
I wind up doing three records on Jos's Feliciano and
some other stuff. And and during that transition time I
did a little record. My name is not on there,
but I still produced. It was Tower Power, Bump City, Yeah,

(01:23:30):
down to the Nine Clubs, to leon Man and all
those records awesome. The problem was they got busted about
two or three times a week, and the fact that
we were friends with the police, they didn't they just
turn them loose back in the studio or whatever. So
when it came down to do a second album, they said,

(01:23:51):
we're not coming back to Memphis, and I said, well,
I'm not going out to Oakland. I went out there
later and row with Steve the bart player. He was
a ride and uh, you know, we hit it off
real good and all that sort of stuff. But the
rest of the man, we would we hit it off tremendously,
all good friends, but I wouldn't go to first go

(01:24:11):
to cut them, and they wouldn't come to l A.
I mean, to to Nashville. So I'm Memphis, I mean,
and uh that's where we ended it right there. So
you did Bumps, you did down to the nightclub bump City. Yeah, unbelievable,
unbelievable records. Okay, So at any point in this game,

(01:24:36):
do you feel in the seventies that, hey, you've had
a lot of success, be you want to walk away?
See are you still on a roll? You fear where
you are in the game, Are you thinking about any
of that stuff. No, the thing is that what I
look back on my career. I spent over nine years
in the studio in the fifties up the years on

(01:24:57):
the road. So uh, they say, what do you like
the best? I said, I don't. It didn't matter. If
I'm on stage, I'm having a great time. If I'm
in the studio, I'm having a great time. So it
doesn't matter. But when you can make a living out
of having fun, that's the best thing. That's now I understand.
I've always understood why sports guys who get paid a

(01:25:19):
lot of money to do to play the same game
they've been playing since they were kids. And nothing wrong
with that. No, accept it ends at some point where
as a musician, if you're good, you can continue to go.
You have to God takes you away, right, Okay, Now,
working with all these people, you have a unique guitar style.
Did it ever change your guitar style being having all

(01:25:41):
these other influences? No, I don't think so. But you know,
I listened to radio every now and then I go, hey,
I played pretty good on that. I remember half of it?
I don't. And then at this point you know you're
you're in the pan theeon in that era? Does it
end up that you end up meeting everybody like obviously
you're working with Jeff Beck, do you know? You know

(01:26:05):
pretty close? That's the scary part. I think I've met
almost everybody. There's anybody, whether comedians or actors or whatever.
I met him all presidents. I played for four of them.
And you know, and I would like to thank Bill
Clinton and I were pretty good friends at one time.
How did you become friends with Bill Clinton? Well, you don't,

(01:26:28):
I mean you he takes you on. You don't take
him on. You might accept him as a person, but
if if he's standing at the end of the stage
or an address of Whiting on the restaurant where you
get up stage, you got a pretty good ata likes
you and not eously. You know, you come from adjoining states.
But what would you talk to Bill Clinton about? Music? Really? Yeah?

(01:26:53):
And would he ever? Definitely didn't talk about girls or
the state. We've talked about music. I wasn't fishing for that.
But would he ever? Did he ever call you on
the phone and say, hey, Steve, no, no, So what
did you get in the Oval office? He said? You know,
I remember where I was the day I heard Grant Onions.
I mean not Grandos, but Dock of the Bay. He
was in a pub in England. He told me, as

(01:27:15):
I'm walking over, So what did you learn about famous people? Well,
I'll tell you this. There's only three guys in my
career that could light up a room just by walking
into it. Elvis was one of them. Bill Clinton was
another one, and Roy Oberson was the third one. They

(01:27:36):
walk in, every head would turn, every conversation would just stop,
didn't go back to where it was, And that's what
they did. And you're making this R and B music
in Memphis? What did you think about the British Invasion sound,
the Beatles and who came thereafter then ultimately clapped in
and back, and then you have to San Francisco sound,

(01:27:57):
and then ultimately the folk rock from Los Ange Angelists.
Was that something that interested you? Or he was saying, well,
I'm just doing what I'm doing. I would say, I'm
doing what I'm doing, and I'm okay at that. I'll
just stick with what I got to successful. Well, I
venture out and try to do something I don't know
a lot of people do. Okay, let's let's talk about

(01:28:18):
another legendary moment. Okay, I remember going to see Lemmings
off Broadway, becoming aware of John Belushi and Chevy Chase
and the fall of seventy. SNL goes on Ackroid and
Blush start this crazy thing with the Blues brothers you
know from me and talking to you down a little different.

(01:28:39):
It's like, you know, listen, how the fund does you know?
Steve Cropper half time to say, Okay, I'm gonna pick
up I'm gonna go on the road with these guys.
I mean, how did all that happen? What was going
through your mind? Okay, I don't know. It's kind of weird,
but I'll tell you the connection. So Belushi happened to

(01:28:59):
be the New Year's Eve gig that we played with
Levon Helm in New York, and he said, if I
ever put a band together, I wanted that band. And
then he got the opportunity to Steve Martin asked him
to open up some shows for him. So Steve said,
that's when Steve Martin had King Tutt. His connection was
Sating out Live. Was a writer for Saturday Night Lives,

(01:29:20):
so he knew them very well. So he comes to
John and he says, I want you guys to open
from me. He said, they insist that I have an
opening act, and I want you guys to do it
rather than use some local band, you know. And John says, well,
you know, Danny and I don't do stand up comedy.
He said, I don't care what you do, he said.
John says, good. Can we play music? He said, if
you want to play music, play music. That's when he

(01:29:41):
started putting the band together. So I get a call
from him. I'm I'm working on Robin Ford's album, Great
Guitar Player, and I have this thing when I'm mixing
or working on somebody, and we were mixing the album
at the time. No calls except one guy who might
take me to lunch. He was he was worked for

(01:30:02):
the publishing company that I was with it. I wasn't
with them, but they had some of the old songs,
and uh, I said, if he calls, it's okay. And
he would always call and say I'm president so on,
so this is Stevie Wonder or he'd come up with
a name. So when I said, Belusha's on the phone
for you, I hung up. On the third time. I

(01:30:22):
hung up again the second time on the third time,
he said, don't hang up. It's really John Belushi. The
thing is I had met him before at a Paul
McCartney party and we talked for a long time about music,
about different things, and he was there Paul had hired
him to do that Joe Cocker thing that he used
to do. And uh. Anyway, he said, don't hang up,

(01:30:43):
and then he said, I understand you don't get along
with Duck. Done very well, and so I really left it.
But I knew that wasn't my friend. That had to
be John Belushi, and he said no. He said really.
He said, I've already talked to Duck and Duck's gonna
come up and play. He said I need you up
there and said, I'm in the middle of mixing record.
I can't do it. So he said you can't do it.
I said, man, I can't do it. I can't be

(01:31:05):
up there and tomorrow I can't do it. So when
I hung up with John, Robin was sitting in the
couch below the console. He stands up. He says, I'll
do it. I said, you know you won't. He did.
He said I'll do it. I said, no, you won't.
So I talked to Bruce rob who was an engineer
on the on the job and I said, can we

(01:31:27):
do what you've done before with with with what's her
name from Atlantic, Jerry Wexler, And I said, can you
mix it? Send me the mixes and all, Okay, I'm
gonna tell you this and that and he said, yeah,
So well, I think we had two left was gonna
be so I call blew you back and I said,
if you could wait two or three days, I'll be
up there. And he said, okay, I'll wait on you.

(01:31:49):
So he did, and that's how all got started. So
the other thing, the reason Duck and I are in
the band at the time, we had done two our
theoms and two world tours. Will leave on him and
the Saturday Night Live Horns with a horn back at Horns,
and uh so Belushi goes to Tom alone, he was

(01:32:10):
a trombone player at that time in the director of
the Saturday Night Live Horns and the band, and he said,
you know we're gonna open these shows for Steve Martin.
Do you want to take the whole Saturday Night Live band?
And what should we do? And he said, you need
to get done in cropper because they're old Road Dogs.
I don't know where he got that from it anyway,
that's how we got to be part of it, thanks
to Tom alone. Okay, but if that it turns into
a phenomenon, there ends up being multiple records. You know,

(01:32:34):
tours are just the Blues Brothers. There's a movie. You know.
Was that all a fun ride or did he get older?
This most fun you didn't have in life? I guess
it was pretty pretty fun. Yeah, And we had no
idea that first album doing it ain't what triple platinum
right off the bat. Now I follow up to quadruple
platinum for four million sales at the time, it came

(01:32:55):
out two and a half three million sales, which I
think is the stepping stone, the one thing that allowed
Atlanta to put them a little more pressure on Universal
do a movie because they had turned Danny down before
on the idea of doing a Blues Brothers movie. Okay,
I gotta email from Tivin and he said, you gotta

(01:33:16):
ask Steve some questions that no one's ever asked him.
So he said me, if you and I'm gonna ask
him what about these phone calls with Bob Dylan? I
ain't gonna go there. But anyway, I gotta call Bob,
and I got a call from somebody worked Bob and
said Bob was gonna call you in ten minutes, and
he did, and I just assumed he wanted me to

(01:33:39):
be in his band. I don't know if I had
done or not. And he never did say was you
to be in a band? He never gave me the
opportunity to turn him down. So, so, did you want
to talk music or just talk? Well, he got on
the phone and said, Cropper, I had you in my mind.
He must say that twenty times. I had you in
my mind. Okay, what I had him? Man, that's all

(01:34:02):
he said. Finally hung up. After about ten minutes, he
kept saying that and then hung up. And that was
into that and never heard from him again. No, but
he's a good friend. And what about working with John Lennon. Well,
the thing about that is that it was a pretty
crazy session. But I stayed and so John said, are

(01:34:23):
you gonna stay for the next song? I said absolutely?
He said can you stay after the next song? Because
I came up with a riff that I always thought
it would be good for a book of D n
M cheese. I said sure, so it's after everybody tlearned out.
It's just John Lennon and myself in the studio and
he gets a guitar. It passes to be his bottle
of vodka, which I thought was water holiday long. It

(01:34:45):
was really Holy Acrol. He could handle it. So he
plays me this riff. It's pretty good. So I take
it back short to my band or Tim, and we've
made a little record, recorded it, send it to a secretary,
and one day, by accident, they said John Lennon's new
record is out. That was imagine. Well, whoever put the

(01:35:07):
record on the jew box put in upside down, so
the B side played first. I said, that's the instrumental,
I said, riff. So if you want to pick it up,
it's called beef Jerky. He cut it in New York.
Now are you yes? I said, you've met essentially everybody
anybody ever intimidate you? Do you get up tight meeting people?

(01:35:28):
Or John Lennon just another musician. Well, John Lennon was
John Lennon, but you know I had met him before.
I bet all three, but uh, the only guy that
wasn't there at the time, and in uh what was
the seventies, now, sixty six the Stax Fold tour. They
were at the Bag of Nails and we were down

(01:35:48):
there rehearsal for the show, and uh, the only guy
that wasn't there was George the guitar player is the
only one who wasn't there. It's crazy, but NDO and
Paul and and John were there. Pretty crazy. The thing
about that is that they respected us so much they
sent a Roles to pick us up in red carpet. Wow,

(01:36:10):
that was pretty nice something to do that. And you
also played with Keith Richards. Yeah, what's the smile and joke?
Fare Well, it's the same thing you just said a
while ago. I don't want to admit that. Uh, you know,
I just treat everybody equal and I've always done that.
You are who you are. I mean, I ain't taking

(01:36:32):
anything away from you. But if you want to be special,
you're gonna have to be special. Okay. I think I
understand what you're saying. Yeah, I mean, you know, you
just take all these people with a grain of salt.
So you're planning for a president, Well, you just treat
him like a regor guy, and he loves it. They
always love it if you bow down to him, right,

(01:36:52):
off the bat and treat them like bigger than I know.
That's what I told me. You want to talk to
famous people, first thing you do. First rule is don't
ever talk to him what they're famous about, you know,
all this other stuff. And you were working with Jeff
Beck and Stevie Wonder sent a demo. Yeah, so the

(01:37:13):
Jeff Beck story superstitious. So they want me to hear
the song that Stevie Wonder has written for Jeff Beck.
So we get to Electric Lady Studios and Stevie says,
put it up, put it up, tells the engine to
put it up, put it up. He puts it up.
So while it's playing, it's superstitious. I'll lean over when

(01:37:33):
I said, Stevie, put horns on that and put it out. Yeah,
I did just say that, put horns on it and
put it up. And that is that the version with
horns that came out. Yeah, so you're responsible. So you're
responsible for Beck not getting it. Maybe, but I heard Beck.

(01:37:56):
So Stevie calls him up to sit in one night
and I said, now I find it. It it I
understand why he wrote that for Jeff Beck. Good got
the money. Yeah, but that was a couple of years
ago that I heard it for the first time. I
heard Jeff play for the first time. Okay, a lot
of time is going by. You're still eager to go
on the road, you're still eager to play. Uh, well,

(01:38:20):
that's hard to say. If I ever did. I think
you asked me that similar question before. I'm not sure
I was ever. I have a longing to go fishing
and a longing to play golf that I don't have
a longing to play music. I do that if I'm
called upon, and I will say this. They don't pay
you to play. They pay you to carry the luggist
to an airport. But when about two hours you're on stage, man,

(01:38:43):
that's the best fun you can have. And uh, you know,
I'm also one of those guys. I don't. I enjoyed
playing to be playing, but I don't enjoy planning for
two people two thousand. I enjoy two hundred thousand. I
rooted joy. I understand the concept there too. And uh,

(01:39:04):
you keep up with popular music, no because you've been
through too much or you don't like it. I think
I know the difference in terms of I know what's
a hit and what's not. If it's good enough to
make my hair stand up. It's good. If it doesn't,
it ain't. What are a few records you were not

(01:39:27):
involved with that major here stand up? Mm hmm. That's
a good question. I never thought of it that way,
but I'm I can think of you probably, I don't know.
I really don't know. Okay. And to what to do? You?
Are you a gearhead? What a gearhead? I'm not a

(01:39:48):
gear head? How many? How many guitars you own? Way
too many? You want to play one at the time,
So that's why I'm asking how many? How many? On? Well,
I play the same gitub and playing one. I retired
one after fourteen years and the one I'm playing presently
I've been playing close to ten years. Now, why did
you retire the first one? Uh? It needed to be refretted. Okay?

(01:40:13):
And what model is this? Well, it's it's a telecaster,
but it's made by Pete called a Generation series, very
versatile guitar. People said, why did you pick up the telecaster?
Because it's the most personal guitar on the planet. You
can make it do about anything. If you want to
play rock, you can hear the switch and make it

(01:40:34):
play rock. If you want to play R and B,
you can play R and B. You want to play chinks,
just back beats. It's just the only guitar in the
world is built for back beats, I think, because the
other one you hit it, you hit a six or
six do chord. It's going to the store. A telecaster doesn't.
What about a strato caster. A lot of the English

(01:40:54):
musicians played stratocasters. Listen. Yeah, they have a different sound.
It's a different pickup set up. And and the other
thing is that I play with my palm of my
hand muted on the bridge. No matter who makes the guitar,
that's where it is. So on a strap it will
take the pick out of my hand in two beats
because I been'll pick up. So I have several custom

(01:41:15):
made straps with a nod midle pick up. Really. Yeah,
And what about the amps, Well, that's different. I will
give you a little secret on picking the best electric guitar.
Play it acoustically. If it sounds good acoustically, you can
find an amp to marriage with it to make it

(01:41:36):
sound really good, even a solid body like the telecaster. Yeah,
and how about a fact? How about effects? Well, it
depends I don't use a lot of effects. Never did.
That's not my sound. And tremorl oh, yeah, book or
T I have a tremulator similator thing that makes it

(01:41:57):
vibrate um. The old super reverbs had one vibrato in it.
The one I'm planning now the amp does not have
one in it, so I have to use it outboard,
just get a little deeper. Fender had tubes, then they
went to transistors. We have marshals. Are you a guy
who says, well, transistors tubes totally different sound. You gotta

(01:42:20):
have the right amp. Maybe the best amp I ever
had had both one side was to the other side was,
you know, just regularly whatever they do the new technology. Uh,
that amp I don't have any more. What amp was that?

(01:42:40):
It was a PDM Okay, do you like when people
call you the colonel or not like it? It doesn't matter.
My nickname is crap dog. Let's go back to the beginning.
Back in the very beginning. Did they call you Steve
or did they call you a cropper? I think Steve

(01:43:04):
in the beginning? How far back you're going? Two stacks?
Well before that, in high school we had a former
that we used, so I was Saucy, son of Hollins Cropper.
Now some of it works, some of it doesn't. But
Tom dad always called me Saucy s a U see

(01:43:26):
why because he thought that's what it was, Saucy. Okay,
if you were Sauncy, did everybody else have an equivalent nickname? Yeah? Wow,
that's definitely the man it was. I was the son
of who whatever their dad was. Some of the works
and some of it didn't. Okay, So then you get

(01:43:46):
the stacks. What's your name creeper? Why is it that?
I don't know because that's what Eddie Floyd called me?
Creeps creeper or creepster? Is that because you crept along
or he creeped? You know that? But he did? You know?

(01:44:09):
His nickname is tree from from wood wood of a tree,
so everybody calls him a tree. And then how did
you become the colonel? And then uh, I don't know that. Well,
the horns gave me that in in Japan and they
don't remember what I did. Uh. So Eddie Floyd called
me also Stevie instead of Stevie wonder they call me

(01:44:30):
Stevie Blunder. Did you make it? And I remember Eddie
Floyd used to say, you know, if you look at
the stea, he's one. He said, you can't see him.
He said, if he turns out of what you can.
And I was skinny in those days. I guess I
don't know. And what about crumpster? What's that all about?

(01:44:51):
I have no idea. Well do you do your friends
call your crumpster? I'm trying to think now, since you
asked me the question, you know they don't. I'm trying
to think what John belushia called me other than Cropper.
Most of the guys just say the last name Cropper.

(01:45:11):
And then when you were he was Blushi funny in
real in regular life. Yeah. But the thing about Belushi
was he never turned down a fan ever. If there
was two guys or two hundred guys, he would stay
there till it was over with and that was it.
And uh, when I was hanging with him in New
York and l A, people would jump over cars and

(01:45:31):
jump in front of cars or whatever. If he was
across the street hanging out the windows, yelling and screaming
and all that kind of stuff. And Roy overs and
they did the same thing with Roy. And I'm going
I hope I never come in that famous I guess
I hadn't. And how's your help? So far, so good,
so hopefully you'll be around for another twenty years, Steve,

(01:45:52):
this has been wonderful. There's so many stories I still
want to hear, but I think we've come to the
end of the feeling for today. Thanks so much for
the with this. You better anytime, man, Okay, until next time.
This is Bob left sets

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Bob Lefsetz

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