While listening to Sam & Dave’s classic hit song, Soul Man, it occurred to me that when they yell, “Play it, Steve!”, they are most likely referring to Steve Cropper.
Last year, I picked up Steve Cropper’s album, With A Little Help From My Friends, released by Stax/Volt Records in 1969. It’s a great instrumental album of classic songs such as Oh, Pretty Woman, Land of 1000 Dances and In The Midnight Hour, to name a few.
There’s one song in particular I really enjoy playing in my DJ sets. During my long sets, I like to transition in and out of multiple genres. So I might start with 90’s indie rock and transition into soul/R&B and then into rock, etc. I like to keep it moving by not staying on one genre for four hours straight. I try to use instrumental songs to make these transitions as smooth as possible which brings me to Cropper’s song, Funky Broadway. The song always gets people nodding their heads to the beat and lets me move from a rock set to a soul/R&B set easily. I love spinning it…
An entire book could be (and should be) written about Steve Cropper so I won’t dive too deep into his career here. Just enjoy the Funky Broadway track and if you ever see this LP in a record store, pick it up, you won’t be disappointed.
Aaron Hartley 