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Esteemed musician Steve Cropper, the celebrated guitarist with the seminal soul group Booker T & the MGs, has died at the age of 84.

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

Widely regarded among the finest studio bands in soul music, the four-piece band Booker T. Jones and the MGs was the house band of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax Records and is most famous for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.

Cropper went on to join the blues revival band The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and featured on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a deeply admired musician, songwriter, and producer whose extraordinary talent impacted countless people around the world," his family stated in a release.

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

A reason for his passing was not immediately known.

An associate, Eddie Gore, stated he was with Cropper on Tuesday in Nashville, where the guitarist was in the process of creating new music.

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

A Storied Musical Path

Named the number two guitarist of all time by a music periodical in 1996, Cropper started his career at Stax Records in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs came together, comprising organist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg - who was succeeded by Donald "Duck" Dunn in 1964.

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

"I've always considered myself to be a rhythm guitarist," Cropper explained 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 won't even play the same phrase twice."

As well as a guitarist, Cropper was a productive songwriter, and in addition to Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he collaborated on Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.

According to available information, he was "integral to nearly all record issued by Stax from 1961 through year end 1970".

"We would often spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had 17 or 18 artists signed to the label, so we had a very hectic schedule."