Steve Cropper

I grew up kind of on the Grand Ole Opry in the

kind of Louisiana hayride kind of stuff.

Well, that was really the thing.

When I got a chance to have my own radio and start turning the knobs, I found one night on WDIA black spiritual music.

I'd never heard it before, and it just blew me away, the feeling, the excitement of it, and that sort of thing.

I grew up in the Church of Christ, which is in those days basically a cappella church.

uh... singing uh... and i was very used to religious music and i liked it but here was a new twist on it it had a beat and it was you know what we call funky now and that was really i think the the turning point in my interest in music there was a music there that i really couldn't get enough of and i just loved it when you started when you started playing guitar did you have a sense of where you could fit in musically into the kind of music that you liked most

Well, I think so.

Definitely was spiritual because it was a rhythm thing.

It wasn't so much lead and all of that.

I really wasn't all that interested in intricate kind of music from a classical standpoint or from a country fiddle and that sort of thing.

I liked listening to it, but I didn't have any desire to get an instrument and try to copy that.

I never really was a lead player.

I never tried to be a lead player.

I've been lucky enough to have played a few solos on some great artist records.

but really I'm a rhythm man, and my best forte, I think, is capturing the feel of a song during its inception in the studio.

I think that's where I'm best.

Even though people fly me in all over to play on their records and overdub, I think they would be better using me on the ground floor, you know, as a building block rather than as a cherry on the cake.

Tape copier and editor.

Well, it started, Charles Axton, the tenor player, and the funny story about Charles Axton.