Joe Messina, one of the original guitarists of Motown Records’ in-house backing band the Funk Brothers, died Monday at the age of 93.

Born on December 13, 1928 in Detroit, Messina began playing guitar as a child and dropped out of high school to pursue a career as a jazz musician. He played in local clubs and led a band, the Joe Messina Orchestra, before joining the house band for the daily children’s television show. The Soupy sales fairwhere he played alongside jazz legends such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

In 1959, Motown founder Berry Gordy recruited Messina to join his stable of studio musicians to record at the label’s headquarters in Hitsville USA. Messina commanded an hourly rate of $10, well above Gordy’s typical $5 per song rate, and served as the official Funk Brother from 1959 to 1972.

Watch Joe Messina on “The Soupy Sales Show”

During this time Messina performed on hit records by Martha & the Vandellas, Four Tops, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross and many more. Despite their anonymity, the Funk Brothers have scored more No. 1 hits than the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys and Elvis Presley combined.

Messina was not just an incredibly prolific session player, but a revolutionary guitarist who created The interval study methoda technique that uses chromatic and diatonic scales to make music.

The Funk Brothers recorded music at such a breakneck pace that Messina rarely had time to digest and remember their songs. “I never knew much about our songs anyway, because I recorded them, and when I left the studio, I didn’t get a chance to play them again, so I didn’t know not the songs,” he told the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2005.

Watch Joe Messina’s Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum Interview

Messina quit working for Motown after Gordy moved the label from Detroit to Los Angeles in 1972. He also quit playing guitar for the next 30 years, taking up the harmonica instead. The Funk Brothers went on tour in 2002 after being spotlighted in the Standing in the shadow of Motown documentary, and the surviving members of the group received a Grammy Legend Award in 2004.

The Motown Museum tribute paid to Messina on Facebook yesterday, writing, “The Motown Museum sends our heartfelt condolences to the Messina family, and Joe’s friends and fans around the world.”