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Steve Cropper, the celebrated guitarist with the iconic band Booker T & the MGs, has died at the age of 84.

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

Often cited among the greatest studio bands in soul music, the quartet Booker T. Jones and the MGs was the house band of the historic Memphis label Stax Records and is best remembered for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.

Cropper also joined the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act The Blues Brothers in the late '70s and featured on their successful version of Soul Man.

"Steve was a cherished musician, songwriter, and producer whose immense talent touched millions of lives around the world," his family said in a statement.

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

A cause of death was not immediately known.

An associate, Eddie Gore, mentioned he was with Cropper just the day before in Nashville, where the guitarist had been working on new songs.

"He's such a good 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 music periodical in 1996, Cropper started his career at the Stax label in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs were formed, 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 honored by inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

"I've always seen myself as a rhythm player," Cropper explained in a past interview. "I enjoy the fact that I can play something over and over, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They are reluctant to repeat the same phrase twice."

Not only was he a guitarist, Cropper was a productive 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 "a part of the majority of record put out by Stax from the fall of 1961 through the end of 1970".

"We would literally spend marathon sessions in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had a roster of artists we worked with, so we had a pretty busy schedule."