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Steve Cropper: The Man Who Wrote The Book

Bill Bentley, L.A. Weekly, 1 May 1980

THE LATE sixties were a time for guitars, and five musicians — fifty fingers — appeared to naturally jump to the center of attention: Jimi Hendrix crossed the color barrier with a visual flamboyance unseen until then; Eric Clapton, moving from the blues coterie of John Mayall's followers to the mass appeal of Cream, held up the tradition of English elan; a world away in the clubs of Chicago, Michael Bloomfield became the flagbearer for the hard-core blues buffs; and Duane Allman, no stranger to Southern studio sessions, wasted no time in moving to the infield of rock stars. Before all this, really at the very start of the sixties, a teenage Memphis musician had his fingers to the fret of his Telecaster guitar and was getting ready to turn the history of American music around with the four-piece band, the Memphis Croup, a.k.a. MG's.

Total word count of piece: 1425

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