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The legendary guitarist Steve Cropper, the renowned guitarist with the iconic band Booker T & the MGs, has died at the age of 84.

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

Widely regarded among the greatest studio bands in soul and R&B, the quartet Booker T & the MGs was the core musical unit of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax and is most famous for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.

Cropper went on to join the comedy music group The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and featured on their popular rendition of Soul Man.

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

"While we mourn the loss of a loved one and companion, we find comfort knowing that Steve will live forever through his music," they added.

A specific cause was not immediately known.

A colleague, Eddie Gore, mentioned 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 commented. "We were lucky to have him, for sure."

A Storied Musical Path

Voted the second-best guitarist of all time by a music periodical in 1996, Cropper started his career at the Stax label in 1961 at the age of 20.

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

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

"I've always thought of myself as a player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper said in a past interview. "I get off on the fact that I can play something consistently, while other guitar players avoid that approach. They refuse to play the same riff twice."

In addition to being a guitarist, Cropper was a prolific songwriter, and besides Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he collaborated on Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.

According to available information, he was "involved in virtually every record put out by Stax from late 1961 through year end 1970".

"We would often spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper said. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists we worked with, so we had a extremely demanding schedule."