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Steve Cropper, the celebrated guitarist with the iconic band Booker T & the MGs, has died at the age of 84.

The artist, who played on and helped pen Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, died recently in the city of Nashville.

Widely regarded among the greatest backing bands in soul and R&B, the group the MGs was the core musical unit of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax and is most famous for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.

Cropper also joined the blues revival band The Blues Brothers in the late '70s and featured on their successful version of Soul Man.

"Steve was a cherished artist, writer, and producer whose profound talent inspired generations around the world," his family stated in a message.

"While we feel sorrow for the loss of a loved one and companion, we find comfort knowing that Steve will be remembered through his music," they noted.

A cause of death was not immediately known.

A colleague, Eddie Gore, mentioned he was with Cropper just the day before in Nashville, where the guitarist was in the process of creating new songs.

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

A Prolific Career

Named the runner-up for guitarist of all time by a UK publication in 1996, Cropper began working at the Stax label in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs were formed, 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 rhythm guitarist," Cropper said in a past interview. "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 are reluctant to repeat the same lick twice."

Not only was he a guitarist, Cropper was a productive songwriter, and alongside 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 "integral to virtually every record put out by Stax from the fall of 1961 through 1970".

"We would truly spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper noted in an interview. "I think we had nearly 20 artists we worked with, so we had a pretty busy schedule."