Steve Cropper & the Midnight Hour 'Watching the tide' album review: The Colonel's final groove

Steve Cropper died in December 2025, while he was still finishing this album. And once you know that, it’s pretty much impossible to listen to Watching The Tide without thinking about it.

But the album itself doesn’t make a huge song and dance about it. There’s no grand farewell, no attempt to turn every track into a musical goodbye. Instead, Cropper does what Cropper always did, he gets on with making the music.

For more than 60 years, The Colonel was one of those musicians who seemed to be everywhere. Guitarist, songwriter, producer and engineer, he was a key part of the Stax sound and worked with everyone from Otis Redding and Sam & Dave to Albert King and Booker T. & The M.G.’s.

He was never a showy player. Cropper was the engine room: the groove, the bloke quietly making sure everything worked while somebody else stood at the front getting the applause. Watching The Tide is a pretty good demonstration of exactly why he was so highly regarded.

It opens with Tandoori Chicken, a fade-up instrumental that immediately raises a smile. There’s that unmistakable Booker T groove, brass and all, harking right back to Green Onions and those early Stax days. It’s almost as if Cropper is having a little joke with us before we’ve even properly got started.

Then comes Ticket First, featuring Eric Clapton. If you’re expecting some sort of guitar Olympics between the two, forget it. This is much more relaxed: a tough Southern blues groove, tasteful guitar and two old hands simply enjoying themselves. The track apparently started with a joke, with Clapton putting his own stamp on the song so convincingly that producer Jon Tiven joked he might have to give him a writing credit. Clapton’s response was apparently that he’d be quite happy if it meant getting his name next to Steve Cropper’s.

Then we get to My Angels Are Calling, and suddenly things feel rather different. Brian May takes the lead vocal on a song written from Cropper’s own point of view, looking back over his life and the road he travelled. It’s a beautiful, rueful track, while Billy F. Gibbons adds the guitar solo.

Knowing Cropper heard the mixes before he died makes it all the more moving. It feels less like somebody else writing a tribute and more like Cropper had a hand in writing his own farewell.

Until Now brings Ronnie Wood into the mix, with some gritty slide guitar adding a bit more dirt to proceedings. After the reflection of My Angels Are Calling, it’s a welcome change of gear.

Blood From A Stone follows, with Tiven taking the lead guitar, while Here & Gone features Ana Grosh on vocals. And by this point, something becomes pretty obvious.

For all the big names : Clapton, May, Gibbons and Wood, this isn’t a “look who I’ve got on my album” record. Nobody is showing off. Nobody is trying to steal the spotlight. And perhaps that’s exactly right for The Colonel.

The second half keeps things moving. It’s Gonna Get Worse brings some gallows-humour funk, Down & Out has more of a laid-back feel, and Tip Off To The Rip Off combines a stalking groove with a sharper message.

Watching The Tide could so easily have become one of those late-career albums where everyone involved is simply celebrating the past. It doesn’t. Sure, there’s plenty of history running through it: Stax, soul, R&B, gospel and Southern blues, but Cropper isn’t simply trying to recreate his glory days.

There’s a proper band here, with Roger C. Reale and Ana Grosh on vocals, Nioshi Jackson on drums and Eddie Gore on keys and percussion, with Tiven involved in the arrangements and production.

But Watching The Tide doesn’t feel like it’s trading purely on nostalgia or Steve Cropper’s very impressive address book. The famous names are part of the record rather than the record being built around them. And that makes a difference. It feels like Steve Cropper doing what Steve Cropper did best: Making everyone around him sound better - and he did it right up to the end.