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Esteemed musician Steve Cropper, the renowned guitarist with the seminal soul group Booker T & the MGs, has died at the age of 84.

The artist, who contributed to and co-wrote the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, passed away recently in Music City, Nashville.

Often cited among the finest studio bands in soul music, the quartet the MGs was the house band of the influential Memphis label Stax/Volt and is most famous for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.

Cropper later became a member of the comedy music group The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and featured on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a deeply admired artist, writer, and producer whose immense talent touched millions of lives around the world," his family expressed in a release.

"While we feel sorrow for the loss of a loved one and companion, we take solace knowing that Steve will be remembered through his music," they noted.

A specific cause was not disclosed.

An associate, Eddie Gore, stated he was with Cropper just the day before in Nashville, where the guitarist was in the process of creating fresh material.

"He's such a good human," Gore said. "We were blessed to have him, for sure."

A Storied Musical Path

Voted the runner-up for guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper started his career at Stax Records in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs were founded, consisting of organist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg - who was replaced by Donald "Duck" Dunn in 1964.

The band was honored by inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

"I've always seen myself as a rhythm guitarist," Cropper said in a previous conversation. "I enjoy the fact that I can play something repeatedly, while other guitar players avoid that approach. They won't even play the same riff twice."

Not only was he a guitarist, Cropper was a vastly creative songwriter, and besides Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he helped write Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.

According to his official biography, he was "a part of virtually every record issued by Stax from 1961 through 1970".

"We would literally spend marathon sessions in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had nearly 20 artists on the roster, so we had a pretty busy schedule."