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Esteemed musician Steve Cropper, the celebrated guitarist with the iconic band Booker T & the MGs, has died 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 recently in Music City, Nashville.

Widely regarded among the greatest studio bands in soul and R&B, the group Booker T & the MGs was the resident studio band of the historic Memphis label Stax/Volt and is most famous for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.

Cropper went on to join the comedy music group The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and performed on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a deeply admired musician, songwriter, and producer whose extraordinary talent impacted millions of lives 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 noted.

A specific cause was not immediately known.

An associate, Eddie Gore, recalled he was with Cropper recently in Nashville, where the guitarist was developing new songs.

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

An Illustrious Journey

Voted the second-best guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper first found employment at the Stax label 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 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 past interview. "I take pride in the fact that I can play something over and over, while other guitar players wouldn't consider it. They are reluctant to repeat the same lick twice."

Not only was he a guitarist, Cropper was a prolific songwriter, and alongside 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 issued by Stax from late 1961 through year end 1970".

"We would often spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper said. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists signed to the label, so we had a extremely demanding schedule."