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

The guitar virtuoso, who performed on and helped pen Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, died this past Wednesday in Music City, Nashville.

Considered among the greatest studio bands in soul and R&B, the four-piece band Booker T & the MGs was the resident studio band of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax/Volt and is most famous for their 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper went on to join the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and performed on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a cherished guitarist, composer, and producer whose profound talent inspired generations around the world," his family expressed in a release.

"While we grieve the loss of a family man and friend, we are consoled knowing that Steve will be remembered through his music," they continued.

A reason for his passing was not immediately known.

A colleague, Eddie Gore, stated he was with Cropper on Tuesday in Nashville, where the guitarist was developing new songs.

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

A Prolific Career

Named the second-best guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper began working at Stax in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs came together, featuring 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 seen myself as a player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper remarked in a previous conversation. "I get off on the fact that I can play something repeatedly, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They refuse to play the same phrase twice."

As well as a guitarist, Cropper was a vastly creative songwriter, and besides 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 "involved in the majority of record put out by Stax from late 1961 through the end of 1970".

"We would literally spend long days in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists on the roster, so we had a pretty busy schedule."