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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 co-wrote the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, passed away recently in the city of Nashville.

Widely regarded among the greatest backing bands in soul music, the quartet Booker T. Jones and 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 John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and performed on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a beloved musician, songwriter, and producer whose extraordinary talent touched generations around the world," his family expressed in a statement.

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

A cause of death was not immediately known.

A colleague, Eddie Gore, recalled he was with Cropper on Tuesday in Nashville, where the guitarist was in the process of creating fresh material.

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

An Illustrious Journey

Ranked the number two guitarist of all time by a UK publication in 1996, Cropper first found employment at the Stax label in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs came together, consisting of organist 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 considered myself to be a player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper remarked in a previous conversation. "I enjoy the fact that I can play something repeatedly, while other guitar players wouldn't consider it. They won't even play the same phrase 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 available information, he was "a part of the majority of record released by Stax from late 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 on the roster, so we had a extremely demanding schedule."