© Brian Hineline/Retna Ltd./Corbis
What do the following songs have in common? Eddie Floyd's Knock On Wood, Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, Sam & Dave's Soul Man and Otis Redding's (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay...
Well, OK, it's a tad obvious in this scenario. They were all co-written by Steve 'The Colonel' Cropper, a guitarist whose reputation as a legendary figure had, as such, been long established by the time the classic film The Blues Brothers was released, in which he made an effective cameo clad in a "...candy-ass monkey suit..."
That said, probably his best-loved work appears on Green Onions, immortalised in 1962 by Booker T. & the M.G.s.
© Michael Ochs Archives/Corbis
Steve is second-right in this great old shot of the band, Fender Tele in hand, and, below, enjoy a Shaky-Cam clip of a more recent performance that proves once again that less is most definitely more...
“He seems to access a different part of his vast library of music genre from the jukebox-in-his-head! This album is a round-the-world musical trip”: Joe Bonamassa announces new album, Breakthrough – listen to the title-track now
"There had to be some sort of telepathy going on because I've never seen spontaneous inspiration happen at that level”: The genius of Eric Clapton's controversial masterpiece, Layla
