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

The artist, who played on and collaborated on writing the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and the hit track In the Midnight Hour, died recently in the city of Nashville.

Widely regarded among the finest studio bands in soul music, the quartet Booker T. Jones and the MGs was the resident studio band of the historic Memphis label Stax Records and is most famous for their 1962 track Green Onions.

Cropper also joined the blues revival band The Blues Brothers in the 1970s and performed on their successful version of Soul Man.

"Steve was a cherished guitarist, composer, and producer whose immense talent touched millions of lives around the world," his family stated in a statement.

"While we mourn the loss of a family man and friend, we find comfort knowing that Steve will live forever through his music," they added.

A cause of death was not immediately known.

A friend, Eddie Gore, mentioned he was with Cropper just the day before in Nashville, where the guitarist was in the process of creating fresh material.

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

A Storied Musical Path

Named the second-best guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper started his career at the Stax label 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 honored by inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

"I've always considered myself to be a player who focuses on rhythm," Cropper explained in a previous conversation. "I get off on the fact that I can play something repeatedly, while other guitar players wouldn't consider it. They are reluctant to repeat the same phrase twice."

As well as a guitarist, Cropper was a prolific songwriter, and besides Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he helped write Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.

According to available information, he was "integral to the majority of record put out by Stax from the fall of 1961 through the end of 1970".

"We would literally spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper once recalled. "I think we had nearly 20 artists on the roster, so we had a pretty busy schedule."