🔗 Share this article

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

The musician, who performed on and co-wrote the classic song Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, succumbed on Wednesday in the city of Nashville.

Often cited among the greatest studio bands in soul and R&B, the group Booker T. Jones and the MGs was the core musical unit of the influential Memphis label Stax 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 '70s and performed on their successful version of Soul Man.

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

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

A cause of death was not disclosed.

An associate, Eddie Gore, stated he was with Cropper just the day before in Nashville, where the guitarist was developing new music.

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

A Prolific Career

Named the number two guitarist of all time by a British music magazine in 1996, Cropper began working at the Stax label in 1961 at the age of 20.

A year later, the MGs were founded, featuring 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 Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

"I've always thought of myself as a rhythm player," Cropper explained in a previous conversation. "I take pride in the fact that I can play something repeatedly, while other guitar players wouldn't consider it. They refuse to play 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 released by Stax from late 1961 through year end 1970".

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