Motown Guitarist Joe Messina 1928 – 2022

Joe Messina, guitarist for famed Motown session band the Funk Brothers, has died. His death was confirmed by his son Joel Messina, as reported by The Detroit News. Messina passed at his son’s home in Northville, Michigan from kindey disease. He was 93 years old.

Messina was born on December 28, 1928 in Detroit. He began his musical career as a jazz guitarist and got his start playing with the ABC band and also performed with the Soupy Sales nightime jazz band. Along with backing up Motown’s illustrious artists, Messina was performing with jazz legends like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and more early in his career.

In 1959, Motown founder Berry Gordy personally recruited Messina for the Motown session group that would become known as the Funk Brothers. Joe was part of a three-guitar attack that also included Robert White and Eddie Willis. Joe had an affinity for doubling bass lines on the guitar and would often link up with Funk Brothers bassist James Jamerson, which can be heard on Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Your Precious Love.”

Messina also played on additional iconic Motown hits like The Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg,” Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street,” Stevie Wonder’s “For Once In My Life” and Four Tops’ “Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch).” However, when Motown moved to Los Angeles in 1972, the lifelong Detroit resident stayed in his hometown where he owned a car wash and jewelry store.

For years, much of the Funk Brothers’ work was uncredited. The session group’s staggering body of work came to be more widely recognized when the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown arrived in 2002 which saw the Funk Brothers reuniting. The film, the soundtrack for which won Messina and the Funks two Grammy Awards in 2003, was based on a James Jamerson bass instruction/biography by Allan Slutsky. Slutsky shared some thoughts about Messina, as per The Detroit Press.

When I heard the clip where Joe’s playing in the Soupy Sales (jazz) band, he was swinging, man. It’s hard to imagine that the guy playing guitar on ‘Sugar Pie Honey Bunch’ comes out of that. He was a really accomplished musician and a cerebral guy, he could read music.

But his soul was the most beautiful thing. He was always happy, he loved to laugh. He and his wife (Josie) were two peas in a pod. He wouldn’t go on the road without her, so we had to take Josie (who was ailing) in a wheelchair, wherever we went.

While Joe left the music business as a career some time ago, his son Joel stated that he was having friends over to jam not long before his death. One of his musician friends, Steve Shepard, remembered Messina as well.

“Joe was the musician we all wished we could be,” Shepard said. “He could do it all, but he was also a role model as a person. Everyone, from the symphony to jazz clubs looked up to Joe, but he treated other musicians as though they were the stars, and rarely talked about himself. Joe was one of a kind.”