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

The musician, who performed on and helped pen the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and the hit track In the Midnight Hour, died recently in the city of Nashville.

Widely regarded among the finest supporting groups in the history of soul music, the group the MGs was the resident studio band of the influential Memphis label Stax and is most famous for their 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper went on to join the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act The Blues Brothers in the late '70s and featured on their successful version of Soul Man.

"Steve was a cherished guitarist, composer, and producer whose extraordinary talent touched countless people around the world," his family expressed in a release.

"While we feel sorrow for the loss of a family man and friend, we find comfort knowing that Steve will be remembered through his music," they noted.

A cause of death was not released at this time.

A colleague, Eddie Gore, recalled he was with Cropper recently in Nashville, where the guitarist was in the process of creating new music.

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

A Storied Musical Path

Voted the number two guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper started his career at the Stax label in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs came together, featuring 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 considered myself to be a player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper explained in a previous conversation. "I take pride in the fact that I can play something over and over, 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 productive 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 "integral to nearly all record issued by Stax from late 1961 through the end of 1970".

"We would literally spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had nearly 20 artists we worked with, so we had a pretty busy schedule."