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

The guitar virtuoso, who contributed to and co-wrote Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, died this past Wednesday in Music City, Nashville.

Often cited among the greatest backing bands in soul and R&B, the four-piece band the MGs was the core musical unit of the influential Memphis label Stax/Volt and is best remembered for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.

Cropper went on to join the blues revival band The Blues Brothers in the late '70s and played on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a beloved artist, writer, and producer whose extraordinary talent impacted generations around the world," his family stated in a statement.

"While we mourn the loss of a loved one and companion, we are consoled knowing that Steve will be remembered through his music," they added.

A specific cause was not disclosed.

A colleague, Eddie Gore, stated he was with Cropper recently in Nashville, where the guitarist was in the process of creating new music.

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

A Prolific Career

Ranked the second-best guitarist of all time by a music periodical in 1996, Cropper first found employment at Stax in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs came together, featuring keyboardist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg - who was replaced by Donald "Duck" Dunn in 1964.

The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

"I've always thought of myself as a player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper remarked in a previous conversation. "I take pride in the fact that I can play something consistently, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They won't even play the same lick twice."

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

According to available information, he was "integral to virtually every record issued by Stax from the fall of 1961 through year end 1970".

"We would truly spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had a roster of artists on the roster, so we had a pretty busy schedule."