For Steve Cropper, the Blues Brothers was more than a new gig. It was a chance, more than a decade later, to return to some of his greatest moments at Stax. After all, he and bassist buddy Donald “Duck” Dunn had been part of so many of that legendary Memphis label’s signature sides in the 1960s.
At the turn of the ’80s, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd reaminated many of those songs — in the Blues Brothers movie, album and tours.
“Basically, the way I look at that is that Duck Dunn and I got to relive our careers all over again — just by doing the same things we’d always done,” Steve Cropper tells Get Ready to Rock. “We didn’t change anything. We played with some different musicians, but we didn’t change.”
Well, almost nothing. They did end up lowering the key on “Soul Man,” a Sam and Dave classic which was originally driven by a Steve Cropper riff.
Belushi came to the guitarist, after one of their initial run throughs of the song, and said: “Man, that’s great, it’s got a lot of energy. But it’s too high; I can’t sing it,” Cropper remembers. “So, I just dropped it down to where we’ve been doing it forever — and it was a big hit for us.”
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