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

The guitar virtuoso, who performed on and co-wrote the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, died recently in Music City, Nashville.

Considered among the best studio bands in soul music, the four-piece band the MGs was the house band of the influential Memphis label Stax and is most famous for their 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper later became a member of the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act The Blues Brothers in the 1970s and featured on their successful version of Soul Man.

"Steve was a cherished artist, writer, and producer whose extraordinary talent inspired millions of lives around the world," his family said in a statement.

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

A cause of death was not disclosed.

An associate, Eddie Gore, stated he was with Cropper just the day before in Nashville, where the guitarist was developing new music.

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

A Prolific Career

Ranked the second-best guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper first found employment at Stax Records in 1961 at the age of 20.

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

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

"I've always thought of myself as a rhythm player," Cropper said in a previous conversation. "I take pride in 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 riff twice."

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

According to available information, he was "involved in virtually every record released by Stax from late 1961 through the end of 1970".

"We would truly spend marathon sessions in the studio," Cropper noted in an interview. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists on the roster, so we had a pretty busy schedule."