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Esteemed musician Steve Cropper, the acclaimed guitarist with the iconic band Booker T & the MGs, has left us at the age of 84.

The musician, who played on and co-wrote Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, died recently in Music City, Nashville.

Often cited among the best studio bands in soul and R&B, the group Booker T & the MGs was the house band of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax/Volt and is most famous for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.

Cropper went on to join the blues revival band The Blues Brothers in the 1970s and performed on their successful version of Soul Man.

"Steve was a beloved guitarist, composer, and producer whose immense talent impacted countless people around the world," his family said in a statement.

"While we feel sorrow for the loss of a family man and friend, we are consoled knowing that Steve will live forever through his music," they noted.

A specific cause was not immediately known.

An associate, Eddie Gore, stated he was with Cropper recently in Nashville, where the guitarist was in the process of creating new songs.

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

A Prolific Career

Voted 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 were formed, featuring 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 explained in a past interview. "I take pride in the fact that I can play something repeatedly, while other guitar players wouldn't consider it. They are reluctant to repeat the same phrase twice."

Not only was he a guitarist, Cropper was a productive songwriter, and alongside Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he collaborated on Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.

According to historical accounts, he was "a part of virtually every record put out by Stax from the fall of 1961 through 1970".

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