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

The guitar virtuoso, 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 this past Wednesday in the city of Nashville.

Considered among the best studio bands in soul and R&B, the group Booker T & 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 also joined the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and featured on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a deeply admired artist, writer, and producer whose profound talent touched countless people around the world," his family said in a release.

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

A cause of death was not disclosed.

An associate, Eddie Gore, mentioned he was with Cropper recently in Nashville, where the guitarist had been working on new songs.

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

An Illustrious Journey

Named the number two guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper began working at Stax 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 honored by inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

"I've always thought of myself as a rhythm guitarist," Cropper explained in a previous conversation. "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 prolific songwriter, and in addition to 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 nearly all record put out by Stax from late 1961 through 1970".

"We would truly spend long days in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists on the roster, so we had a pretty busy schedule."