Happy Birthday Eddie Chank Willis (born June 3, 1936) Eddie Chank Willis (born June 3, 1936, Grenada, Mississippi, United States) is an African-American soul musician. Willis played electric guitar and occasional electric sitar for Motowns in-house studio band, the Funk Brothers, during the 1960s and early 1970s. Willis is known for his signature style of muted guitar riffs which added a distinctive tone or color to the beat, often timed with the snare, of the hundreds of hit songs recorded at Hitsville U.S.A. for Motown artists. Among the recordings Willis performed on are Please Mr. Postman by The Marvelettes, The Way You Do the Things You Do by The Temptations, You Keep Me Hanging On by The Supremes, and I Was Made to Love Her by Stevie Wonder. Influences for Willis include Chet Atkins, Wes Montgomery, and Albert King. He played a Gibson Firebird guitar on most his early 1960s work, later moving on to use a Gibson ES 335. On recordings such as The Supremes No Matter What Sign You Are, Willis performed on a Coral sitar. He accepted an offer from Phil Collins to perform on his album of Motown and 1960s soul classics, Going Back.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 04:09:27 +0000
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