Steve Cropper, guitarist of Booker T and the MGs, dies aged 84

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

The musician, who played on and co-wrote Otis Redding's Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, died on Wednesday in Nashville, the Associated Press reported, citing a source who was informed by Cropper's family.

Considered among the best backing bands in soul music, the quartet Booker T & the MGs was the house band of influential Memphis label Stax Records and is best remembered for their 1962 track Green Onions.

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

"Steve was a beloved musician, songwriter, and producer whose extraordinary talent touched millions of lives around the world," his family said in a statement, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

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

A cause of death was not immediately known.

Associate Eddie Gore told the AP he was with Cropper on Tuesday in Nashville, where he had been working on new music.

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

Named the second-best guitarist of all time by British music magazine Mojo in 1996, Cropper began working at Stax Records in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs were founded, comprising keyboardist Booker T Jones, drummer Al Jackson and bassist Lewie Steinberg - who was replaced by Donald "Duck" Dunn in 1964.

The band was inducted into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame in 1992.

"I've always thought of myself as a rhythm player," Cropper said in an interview with Guitar.com in 2021.

"I get off on the fact that I can play something over and over and over, while other guitar players don't want to even know about that. They won't even play the same riff or the same lick twice."

As well as a guitarist, Cropper was a prolific songwriter, and in addition to Dock of the Bay and In the Midnight Hour, he co-wrote Eddie Floyd's Knock on Wood.

According to Cropper's website, he was "involved in virtually every record issued by Stax from the fall of 1961 through year end 1970".

"We would literally spend 15 hours a day in the studio," Cropper told the Guardian in 2012.

"I think we had 17 or 18 artists on the roster, so we had a pretty busy schedule."