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

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

Considered among the finest studio bands in soul and R&B, the group the MGs was the core musical unit of the groundbreaking Memphis label Stax Records and is best remembered for their 1962 instrumental track Green Onions.

Cropper also joined the John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd act The Blues Brothers in the late 1970s and featured on their hit cover of Soul Man.

"Steve was a cherished musician, songwriter, and producer whose immense talent impacted millions of lives around the world," his family expressed in a release.

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

A reason for his passing was not immediately known.

A friend, Eddie Gore, recalled he was with Cropper on Tuesday in Nashville, where the guitarist was in the process of creating fresh material.

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

A Storied Musical Path

Voted the second-best guitarist of all time by a music periodical in 1996, Cropper started his career at Stax in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs were founded, 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 thought of myself as a rhythm guitarist," Cropper said in a past interview. "I get off on the fact that I can play something consistently, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They are reluctant to repeat the same phrase twice."

In addition to being a guitarist, Cropper was a vastly creative songwriter, and in addition to Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he co-wrote Eddie Floyd's hit Knock on Wood.

According to available information, he was "a part of the majority of record released by Stax from the fall of 1961 through year end 1970".

"We would literally spend long days in the studio," Cropper said. "I think we had nearly 20 artists signed to the label, so we had a pretty busy schedule."