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

The musician, who contributed to and helped pen Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and the hit track In the Midnight Hour, succumbed recently in Music City, Nashville.

Widely regarded among the best backing bands in the history of soul music, the group Booker T & the MGs was the resident studio band of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax Records and is most famous for their classic 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper later became a member of the blues revival band The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and played on their successful version of Soul Man.

"Steve was a beloved musician, songwriter, and producer whose immense talent inspired generations around the world," his family expressed in a release.

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

A cause of death was not immediately known.

A colleague, Eddie Gore, mentioned he was with Cropper recently in Nashville, where the guitarist was developing new music.

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

A Storied Musical Path

Ranked the second-best guitarist of all time by a UK publication in 1996, Cropper began working at Stax in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs came together, featuring organist 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 seen myself as a rhythm guitarist," Cropper remarked 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 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 "integral to the majority of record issued by Stax from 1961 through the end of 1970".

"We would truly spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists we worked with, so we had a extremely demanding schedule."