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

The artist, who contributed to and helped pen Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, succumbed recently in Music City, Nashville.

Considered among the finest studio bands in the history of soul music, the group Booker T. Jones and the MGs was the house band of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax and is best remembered for their classic 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper also joined 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 artist, writer, and producer whose immense talent touched millions of lives around the world," his family stated in a release.

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

A specific cause was not released at this time.

An associate, Eddie Gore, mentioned 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 fortunate to have him, for sure."

A Prolific Career

Voted the number two 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 founded, 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 player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper said in a previous conversation. "I get off on 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 alongside Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he co-wrote Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.

According to his official biography, he was "integral to nearly all record put out by Stax from late 1961 through the end of 1970".

"We would truly spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper said. "I think we had nearly 20 artists signed to the label, so we had a extremely demanding schedule."