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Steve Cropper, the renowned guitarist with Booker T and the MGs, has left us at the age of 84.

The musician, who played on and helped pen Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, succumbed recently in Nashville.

Often cited among the best backing 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/Volt and is most famous for their classic 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper went on to join the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and played on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a cherished guitarist, composer, and producer whose profound talent impacted millions of lives around the world," his family expressed in a release.

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

A specific cause was not released at this time.

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

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

An Illustrious Journey

Named the second-best guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper started his career at Stax Records in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs came together, consisting of 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 seen 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 repeatedly, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They won't even play the same lick twice."

In addition to being 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 his official biography, he was "involved in virtually every record released by Stax from the fall of 1961 through the end of 1970".

"We would often spend long days in the studio," Cropper said. "I think we had nearly 20 artists we worked with, so we had a pretty busy schedule."