Joe Messina, the original guitarist for legendary Motown Records studio band the Funk Brothers, has died. Billboard reports that Messina died yesterday in Detroit after a 12-year battle with kidney disease. He was 93.

Messina, a Detroit native, started playing guitar as a child, and he dropped out of high school to make it as a jazz musician. Within the world of jazz, Messina did quite well for himself. He led his own band, the Joe Messina Orchestra, playing Detroit clubs, and he eventually joined the house band at The Soupy Sales Show, and ABC variety show that launched in 1953. On The Soupy Sales Show, Messina played alongside jazz greats like Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker. Messina also invented a music technique that he called the Interval Study Method, which involves chromatic and diatonic scales.

In 1959, when Berry Gordy launched the label that would become Motown Records, he recruited the members of the house band known as the Funk Brothers from the Detroit jazz scene. Messina was one of the first musicians that Gordy hired, and he initially agreed to pay Messina $10 per hour — more than any of the other Funk Brothers. Eventually, Gordy put all of the Funk Brothers on a union salary. At Motown, Messina played on hundreds of records between 1959 and 1972. The Funk Brothers would crank out records every day in Motown’s Hitsville USA studio. Messina played a Fender Telecaster, and his bright tones appeared, uncredited, on dozens of hits. When Motown left Detroit for Los Angeles in 1972, Messina decided to stay in Detroit.

After his time at Motown, Messina switched from guitar to harmonica, and he mostly left the music business behind, though he did release a solo album called Messina Madness in 1993. At the time, Messina was mostly focused on his local businesses, including a jewelry store and two car washes. But when the Funk Brothers reunited for the 2002 live-concert documentary Standing In The Shadows Of Motown and for its ensuing tour, Messina took part. He had to relearn his parts from all those old Motown hits, since he barely remembered playing on them.

Below, check out a few of the classics that featured Messina’s guitar.