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

The musician, 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.

Often cited among the best studio bands in soul and R&B, the quartet Booker T & the MGs was the house band of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax/Volt and is primarily known for their 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper went on to join the blues revival band The Blues Brothers in the 1970s and featured on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a deeply admired musician, songwriter, and producer whose extraordinary talent inspired millions of lives around the world," his family expressed in a statement.

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

A reason for his passing was not immediately known.

A friend, Eddie Gore, stated he was with Cropper recently in Nashville, where the guitarist had been working on new music.

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

A Storied Musical Path

Named the runner-up for guitarist of all time by a music periodical in 1996, Cropper began working at Stax in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs were founded, consisting of keyboardist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg - who was replaced by Donald "Duck" Dunn in 1964.

The band was entered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

"I've always seen myself as a player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper said in a previous conversation. "I enjoy the fact that I can play something over and over, while other guitar players avoid that approach. They won't even play the same phrase twice."

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

According to available information, he was "a part of the majority of record issued by Stax from late 1961 through 1970".

"We would truly spend long days in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had a roster of artists we worked with, so we had a extremely demanding schedule."