Motown Funk Brothers Key Guitarist Eddie Willis Dies

DETROIT (AP) — A funeral home director says Eddie Willis, a key session guitarist for Motown Records, has died at his Mississippi home.

Clark-Williams Funeral Home Director Clinton Williams said Willis died Monday in Gore Springs. He was 82.

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Willis' daughter, Terez Willis, told the Detroit Free Press he had been suffering from complications from polio, which he contracted as a child. His ailments prompted a benefit record to be released last year from a 2013 performance featuring the guitarist and other Motown alums.

Willis joined the Funk Brothers, Motown's house band, at the time of the label's 1959 founding in Detroit. The mostly behind-the-scenes studio group received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2013, a ceremony Willis attended.

Willis played on scores of hits, including the Temptations' "The Way You Do The Things You Do" and Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour."

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