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

The guitar virtuoso, who played on and collaborated on writing the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, succumbed recently in Music City, Nashville.

Widely regarded among the greatest studio bands in soul and R&B, the four-piece band Booker T. Jones and the MGs was the resident studio band of the influential Memphis label Stax and is best remembered for their classic 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper later became a member of the comedy music group The Blues Brothers in the late '70s and performed on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a deeply admired guitarist, composer, and producer whose extraordinary talent inspired millions of lives around the world," his family stated in a statement.

"While we feel sorrow for the loss of a loved one and companion, we are consoled knowing that Steve will endure through his music," they noted.

A reason for his passing was not immediately known.

An associate, Eddie Gore, mentioned he was with Cropper on Tuesday in Nashville, where the guitarist had been working on fresh material.

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

A Prolific Career

Ranked the second-best guitarist of all time by a music periodical in 1996, Cropper began working at Stax 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 replaced 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 rhythm guitarist," Cropper explained in a past interview. "I take pride in the fact that I can play something repeatedly, while other guitar players avoid that approach. They won't even play the same lick twice."

In addition to being a guitarist, Cropper was a productive songwriter, and in addition to 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 nearly all record released by Stax from late 1961 through 1970".

"We would often spend long days in the studio," Cropper noted in an interview. "I think we had a roster of artists we worked with, so we had a extremely demanding schedule."