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

The artist, who performed on and collaborated on writing Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, succumbed this past Wednesday in Nashville.

Widely regarded among the finest studio bands in the history of soul music, the quartet Booker T. Jones and the MGs was the house band of the influential Memphis label Stax and is primarily known for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.

Cropper later became a member of the blues revival band The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and featured on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a deeply admired guitarist, composer, and producer whose profound talent touched countless people around the world," his family expressed in a statement.

"While we feel sorrow for the loss of a husband, father, and friend, we find comfort knowing that Steve will endure through his music," they noted.

A reason for his passing was not immediately known.

An associate, Eddie Gore, mentioned he was with Cropper recently in Nashville, where the guitarist had been working on fresh material.

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

A Storied Musical Path

Ranked the number two guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper first found employment at Stax Records in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs were founded, comprising keyboardist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg - who was succeeded 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 explained in a past interview. "I get off on the fact that I can play something over and over, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They won't even play the same riff twice."

As well as 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 "a part of the majority of record put out by Stax from 1961 through year end 1970".

"We would literally spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had nearly 20 artists signed to the label, so we had a pretty busy schedule."