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

The artist, who played on and co-wrote Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, died on Wednesday in Music City, Nashville.

Considered among the best supporting groups in soul music, the quartet the MGs was the resident studio band of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax 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 performed on their successful version of Soul Man.

"Steve was a deeply admired artist, writer, and producer whose extraordinary talent impacted millions of lives around the world," his family expressed in a release.

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

A cause of death was not disclosed.

A colleague, Eddie Gore, mentioned he was with Cropper just the day before in Nashville, where the guitarist had been working on fresh material.

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

A Prolific Career

Named the second-best guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper started his career at Stax 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 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 considered myself to be a player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper remarked in a previous conversation. "I get off on 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 phrase 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 "involved in the majority of record put out by Stax from the fall of 1961 through 1970".

"We would literally spend marathon sessions in the studio," Cropper said. "I think we had nearly 20 artists on the roster, so we had a very hectic schedule."