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Steve Cropper, the renowned guitarist with Booker T and the MGs, has passed away 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 recently in Music City, Nashville.

Widely regarded among the greatest supporting groups in the history of soul music, the group Booker T. Jones and the MGs was the core musical unit of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax and is most famous for their classic 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper also joined the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act The Blues Brothers in the late '70s 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 stated in a release.

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

A cause of death was not immediately known.

A friend, Eddie Gore, recalled he was with Cropper on Tuesday in Nashville, where the guitarist was developing new music.

"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 music periodical in 1996, Cropper began working 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 thought of myself as a player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper said in a past interview. "I enjoy the fact that I can play something consistently, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They refuse to 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 collaborated on Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.

According to available information, he was "integral to 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 once recalled. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists we worked with, so we had a extremely demanding schedule."