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Steve Cropper, the acclaimed guitarist with Booker T and the MGs, has passed away at the age of 84.

The guitar virtuoso, who played on and collaborated on writing the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, succumbed recently in Music City, Nashville.

Considered among the greatest backing bands in soul and R&B, the group the MGs was the core musical unit of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax/Volt and is best remembered for their classic 1962 track Green Onions.

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

"Steve was a deeply admired musician, songwriter, and producer whose immense talent inspired countless people around the world," his family said in a statement.

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

A specific cause was not immediately known.

A friend, Eddie Gore, mentioned he was with Cropper on Tuesday in Nashville, where the guitarist had been working on fresh material.

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

A Storied Musical Path

Voted the runner-up for guitarist of all time by a music periodical in 1996, Cropper first found employment at Stax Records in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs came together, comprising 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 considered myself to be a rhythm player," Cropper explained in a previous conversation. "I get off on the fact that I can play something over and over, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They refuse to play the same lick twice."

Not only was he a guitarist, Cropper was a vastly creative 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 "a part of nearly all record put out by Stax from late 1961 through year end 1970".

"We would often spend long days in the studio," Cropper said. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists signed to the label, so we had a pretty busy schedule."