Funk Brothers Guitarist Joe Messina Dead at 93

Joe Messina, one of many unique guitarists for Motown Data’ in-house backing band the Funk Brothers, died on Monday on the age of 93.

Born on Dec. 13, 1928, in Detroit, Messina started enjoying guitar as a baby and dropped out of highschool to pursue a profession as a jazz musician. He gigged in native golf equipment and led a band, the Joe Messina Orchestra, earlier than becoming a member of the home band for the each day kids’s tv present The Soupy Gross sales Present, the place he performed alongside jazz legends similar to Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

In 1959, Motown founder Berry Gordy recruited Messina to affix his secure of studio musicians to document on the label’s Hitsville U.S.A. headquarters. Messina commanded a $10-per-hour fee, a lot larger than Gordy’s typical $5-per-song fee, and served as an official Funk Brother from 1959 via 1972.

Watch Joe Messina on ‘The Soupy Gross sales Present’

Throughout that point, Messina performed on hit data by the likes of Martha & the Vandellas, 4 Tops, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Surprise, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross and plenty of extra. Regardless of their anonymity, the Funk Brothers recorded extra No. 1 hits than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Seashore Boys and Elvis Presley mixed.

Messina was not solely an extremely prolific session participant however a groundbreaking guitarist who created The Interval Examine Methodology, a way that makes use of chromatic and diatonic scales to make music.

The Funk Brothers recorded music at such a livid tempo that Messina not often even had time to digest and keep in mind their songs. “I by no means knew a lot about our songs anyway, as a result of I recorded them, and when I left the studio I did not have an opportunity to play them once more, so I did not know the songs,” he informed the Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum in 2005.

Watch Joe Messina’s Musicians Corridor of Fame & Museum Interview

Messina stopped working for Motown after Gordy moved the label from Detroit to Los Angeles in 1972. He stopped enjoying guitar for the following 30 years as nicely, turning as a substitute to harmonica. The Funk Brothers went on tour in 2002 after being spotlighted within the Standing within the Shadows of Motown documentary, and the surviving band members obtained a Grammy Legend Award in 2004.

The Motown Museum paid tribute to Messina on Fb yesterday, writing, “Motown Museum sends our honest condolences to the Messina household, and to Joe’s pals and followers around the globe.”