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

The guitar virtuoso, who played on and helped pen Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and the hit track In the Midnight Hour, died on Wednesday in the city of Nashville.

Often cited among the best studio bands in the history of soul music, the group Booker T & the MGs was the house band of the influential Memphis label Stax Records and is best remembered for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.

Cropper later became a member of the comedy music group The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and performed on their popular rendition of Soul Man.

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

"While we feel sorrow for 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 released at this time.

A colleague, 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 music periodical in 1996, Cropper began working at Stax Records in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs were founded, featuring keyboardist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg - who was replaced 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 rhythm guitarist," Cropper said in a previous conversation. "I take pride in 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."

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 helped write Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.

According to his official biography, he was "a part of the majority of record put out by Stax from the fall of 1961 through year end 1970".

"We would often spend marathon sessions in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had nearly 20 artists on the roster, so we had a pretty busy schedule."