82-year-old Eddie Willis Died, a Member of The Funk Brothers on The Motown Label
Eddie "Chank" Willis, guitarist of the studio group The Funk Brothers, who officiated as support for artists of the Motown label, died yesterday at age 82.
The musician, who earned his nickname for his playing, had suffered health problems for many years and had walked with the help of a cane since he had contracted polio as a child.
Willis can be heard on dozens of Motown songs, beginning with Marv Johnson's "Come to Me" (1959) and including songs from Temptations, Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes and many others. He left the label in 1972, but continued working, for example appearing on the cover album of Motown recorded by Phil Collins in 2010, "Going Home".
"Eddie was the funkester," Dennis Coffey, his partner at Funk Brothers, told Billboard. "He was an incredible guitarist. He had that southern touch. He always invented some funky lines. We did many sessions together and he was just a good guy. I never heard him get mad at anyone for nothing. He just came and did his job."
In 2015 a charity concert was organized to help him financially, after it was reported that he had lost ownership of his house in Mississippi, along with his guitars, and that he survived with disability payments and social security. "Motown disappointed me ... but this amazing thing that these people do makes me feel blessed," he told the New York Daily News at the time. "We were not in the papers, they were not taking care of us as they told us. We are many who remain in the shadows."
"I knew people loved him," his daughter, Terez Willis, told the Detroit Free Press . "I knew that a lot of people in the industry loved him. That's what he talked about when I saw him two weeks ago."
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