Although legendary Stax guitarist Steve Cropper passed away in December 2025, the hit records he played on will be with us as long as we can hum a tune. And it seemingly keeps on coming; earlier this year Steve Cropper & The Midnight Hour’s Watching The Tide album was released via Provogue/Artone Label Group.
The likes of Eric Clapton, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Queen’s Brian May can be heard playing alongside the Missouri-born, Memphis-raised guitarist on the longplayer, so too The Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood on ‘Until Now’, released as a single.
‘Until Now’ features Wood’s stinging slide guitar work, and as Cropper’s bandmate, songwriter and producer Jon Tiven recalled: “Ronnie Wood got back to me about 10 minutes after I sent off my email: ‘Oh, this looks like a lot of fun. I’ll jump in.’ Ron plays some unbelievable slide guitar on that one, which makes it all the better. But when you listen to ‘Until Now’, it’s not really a blues song, per se. It’s more of a song with blues changes that breaks out of the genre. The only other guitar you hear on ‘Until Now’ is Steve, and it’s so atypical of what you would normally hear from him. It’s just a completely different approach, and it knocked me out.”
For an album whose title references the guitarist’s most famous co-write, Otis Redding’s 1968 standard ‘(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay’, Watching The Tide saw Cropper roll back the years, tracking at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio C with a crack-squad band including Ana Grosh (vocals), Nioshi Jackson (drums), engineer Eddie Gore (keyboards, percussion) and a wishlist of guitar heroes. The then 83-year-old sounds ageless and energised.
To anyone who knows the roots and branches of American music, the passing of Steve Cropper was seismic. As a guitarist, songwriter, producer and engineer, not just for the iconic Stax record label but on a forest of sessions and solo releases, the Tennessee soul man was the DNA that coursed through the post-war era, his fabled right hand setting the pace of rock ’n’ roll for 60-plus years.
It’s a huge legacy for a musical colossus who towered over the rock ’n’ roll age. Yet to play this posthumous release is to hear an all-time great still at the top of his game, blending the burning passion of youth with the wisdom of an old master. Steve Cropper might have left us, but Watching The Tide indicates that there is much more still to hear from him.
