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The legendary guitarist Steve Cropper, the renowned guitarist with the seminal soul group Booker T & the MGs, has passed away at the age of 84.

The guitar virtuoso, who contributed to and helped pen Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and the hit track In the Midnight Hour, passed away recently in Music City, Nashville.

Widely regarded among the finest supporting groups in the history of soul music, the group Booker T & the MGs was the house band of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax/Volt and is most famous for their classic 1962 track Green Onions.

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

"Steve was a cherished musician, songwriter, and producer whose extraordinary talent impacted millions of lives around the world," his family expressed in a message.

"While we feel sorrow for the loss of a husband, father, and friend, we take solace knowing that Steve will endure through his music," they continued.

A cause of death was not disclosed.

A colleague, Eddie Gore, recalled he was with Cropper just the day before in Nashville, where the guitarist was developing new songs.

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

An Illustrious Journey

Ranked the runner-up for 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 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 entered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

"I've always seen myself as a rhythm guitarist," Cropper remarked in a previous conversation. "I get off on the fact that I can play something consistently, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They are reluctant to repeat the same riff twice."

Not only was he a guitarist, Cropper was a prolific 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 "a part of the majority of record released by Stax from 1961 through year end 1970".

"We would literally spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had a roster of artists on the roster, so we had a extremely demanding schedule."