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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.
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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