Various Artists - Covered: Steve Cropper, Volume 2: 1968-1994

I just posted Volume 1 of the Covered series albums focusing on the songwriting of Steve Cropper. But while I'm at it, here's Volume 2. As I write this in May 2021, Cropper's music career is still going strong despite him being 79 years old. In fact, he just released one of his very rare solo albums earlier in 2021, called "Fire It Up." But I'm ending the albums on him here with Volume 2.

I said most of what I wanted to say about Cropper with my comments about Volume 1. But I just want to note that Volume 2 includes "(Sittin' on the) Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding, one of the greatest songs of all time. Cropper should be considered a top notch songwriter for his role in writing that song alone! I mentioned in my Volume 1 comments that Cropper seemed to do more of the music than the lyrics when it came to songwriting collaboration. But I was just reading the Wikipedia entry about "Dock of the Bay," and Cropper claims that he wrote most of the words, though from Redding's point of view, after Redding gave him the line "I watch the ships come in and I was them roll away again." I'd believe that claim too, since Cropper is a modest guy. I also suspect Cropper had a big role in writing the music for that song, since it was musically very different from everything else Redding had done up until that point.

All but last four songs here date from 1968 to 1972. Clearly, Cropper's success as a songwriter dropped significantly after that time. I suppose a lot of that had to do with changing musical styles. The Stax style of soul that Cropper was closely associated with also pretty much dropped out of the charts right around then. But Cropper continued to stay busy as a producer and a lead guitarist. In fact, he probably got his greatest fame as a member of the band in the 1980 movie "The Blues Brothers."

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 [Sittin' On] The Dock of the Bay (Otis Redding)
02 See Saw (Aretha Franklin)
03 Soul Limbo (Booker T. & the MG's)
04 The Hunter (Free)
05 Mini-Skirt Minnie (Wilson Pickett)
06 Miss Pitiful (Etta James)
07 Water (Steve Cropper, Albert King & Pop Staples)
08 Melting Pot (Booker T. & the MG's)
09 Move 'Em Out (Delaney & Bonnie)
10 Stone Cold Sober (Rod Stewart)
11 Union Man (Cate Brothers)
12 On the Road Down (Robert Cray)
13 Going, Going, Gone (Bryan White)

https://www.imagenetz.de/bvHHw

For Volume 1, I had a very hard time finding any good photos of Cropper from the 1960s, and I had to resort to colorizing a black and white one. But it's a sign of what a low-key person he is that I had a hard time finding any good color photos of him for the entire rest of his career! Virtually every other photo I found was mainly of someone else, with Cropper as a sideman. I did find this one of him from 1977. But even this one was of him and bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn. I used Photoshop to crop Dunn out of the side of the photo.