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

The artist, who played on and helped pen the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's 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 house band of the historic Memphis label Stax and is most famous for their 1962 track Green Onions.

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

"Steve was a cherished guitarist, composer, and producer whose extraordinary talent touched millions of lives around the world," his family expressed in a message.

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

A specific cause was not immediately known.

A friend, Eddie Gore, mentioned he was with Cropper on Tuesday in Nashville, where the guitarist was in the process of creating new songs.

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

A Storied Musical Path

Ranked the second-best 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 were founded, consisting of keyboardist 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 player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper remarked in a previous conversation. "I enjoy the fact that I can play something consistently, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They won't even play the same riff twice."

Not only was he a guitarist, Cropper was a prolific songwriter, and in addition to Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he co-wrote Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.

According to his official biography, he was "a part of virtually every record issued by Stax from 1961 through the end of 1970".

"We would literally spend marathon sessions in the studio," Cropper noted in an interview. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists we worked with, so we had a pretty busy schedule."