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Esteemed musician Steve Cropper, the renowned guitarist with the seminal soul group Booker T & the MGs, has died 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, succumbed on Wednesday in Music City, Nashville.

Widely regarded among the finest supporting groups in soul and R&B, the group the MGs was the house band of the historic Memphis label Stax and is best remembered for their classic 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper also joined the comedy music group The Blues Brothers in the 1970s and played on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a cherished artist, writer, and producer whose immense talent impacted 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 are consoled knowing that Steve will be remembered through his music," they noted.

A cause of death was not immediately known.

An associate, Eddie Gore, stated he was with Cropper recently in Nashville, where the guitarist had been working on new songs.

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

A Storied Musical Path

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

A year later, the MGs came together, consisting of organist 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 seen myself as a rhythm guitarist," Cropper explained in a previous conversation. "I take pride in the fact that I can play something consistently, while other guitar players wouldn't consider it. They won't even play the same lick twice."

In addition to being a guitarist, Cropper was a vastly creative songwriter, and alongside Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he collaborated on Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.

According to his official biography, he was "involved in nearly all record issued by Stax from the fall of 1961 through 1970".

"We would truly spend long days in the studio," Cropper noted in an interview. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists on the roster, so we had a pretty busy schedule."