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

The musician, who played on and co-wrote the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and the hit track In the Midnight Hour, died recently in Nashville.

Widely regarded among the finest studio bands in the history of soul music, the four-piece band the MGs was the resident studio band of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax/Volt and is most famous for their classic 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper also joined the blues revival band The Blues Brothers in the late '70s and performed on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a deeply admired artist, writer, and producer whose extraordinary talent inspired generations around the world," his family expressed in a statement.

"While we grieve the loss of a husband, father, and friend, we are consoled knowing that Steve will live forever through his music," they continued.

A specific cause was not disclosed.

A friend, Eddie Gore, mentioned he was with Cropper just the day before in Nashville, where the guitarist was developing new music.

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

An Illustrious Journey

Voted the second-best guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper first found employment at the Stax label in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs were founded, 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 considered myself to be a rhythm guitarist," Cropper remarked in a previous conversation. "I take pride in the fact that I can play something repeatedly, while other guitar players avoid that approach. They won't even play the same phrase 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 his official biography, he was "integral to virtually every record issued by Stax from the fall of 1961 through the end of 1970".

"We would literally spend marathon sessions in the studio," Cropper said. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists on the roster, so we had a pretty busy schedule."