Eddie "Chank" Willis (born 3 June 1936, Grenada, Mississippi, United States) is an African-American soul musician. Willis played electric guitar and occasional electric sitar for Motown's 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 covers, Going Back.
Famous quotes containing the word eddie:
“Eddie Felson: Church of the Good Hustler.
Charlie: Looks more like a morgue to me. Those tables are the slabs they lay the stiffs on.
Eddie Felson: I’ll be alive when I get out, Charlie.”
—Sydney Carroll, U.S. screenwriter, and Robert Rossen. Eddie Felson (Paul Newman)