A family friend, Steve Shepard, confirmed his death, from complications from kidney disease.

Messina was a mainstay of Detroit’s vibrant jazz scene for years before joining Motown’s studio band in 1959. Along with about dozen other musicians, including bassist James Jamerson, pianist Earl Van Dyke and drummers Benny Benjamin and Richard “Pistol” Allen, Messina helped form the core of a versatile group that quickly learned and recorded new songs for Motown’s young hitmakers.

Label owner Berry Gordy patterned Motown on automobile production lines, with sessions occurring on a round-the-clock schedule. The company’s early recordings were often completed in one or two takes. Even as Motown songs rose to the top of the charts, Messina and his colleagues went uncredited on the early albums and initially received no royalties for their contributions.

Typically, Motown producers matched Messina with fellow guitarists Robert White and Eddie Willis.

Messina was known for his almost subliminal backbeat rhythms, chord accents that followed the snare drum and tambourine on the second and fourth beats of a bar. At times, all three guitarists played the accents in unison.

On some songs, including 1967′s “Your Precious Love” by Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Messina doubled Jamerson’s bass line. On the Supremes’ 1970 hit “Someday We’ll Be Together,” Messina’s insistent guitar riff can be heard beneath orchestral strings, adding heightened tension to Diana Ross’s vocals.

Although most jazz players played hollow-body guitars, Messina favored a solid-bodied Fender Telecaster with heavy-gauge flat-wound strings for brighter tonality, particularly on the higher notes. He said he emulated saxophonists more than other guitarists.

“I liked the sound” of the Telecaster, he once said. “All the jazz players were playing this thick, ‘muddy ink sound’ with a lot of bass.”

Messina’s experience as a jazz musician made him adept at sight-reading and transposing key signatures, but many of the Motown arrangements were created on the spot by the Funk Brothers.

“They came in with a chord sheet,” Messina told the Musician Hall of Fame, recalling a session with the songwriting and production team of Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland. “It might have had three, possibly four chords at the most, and they would say, ‘Run this down.’ So as we’re running it down, we sort of feel what we think would fit. As we were doing that, they would keep it. So we arranged it for them – didn’t know we were doing it!”

Joseph Lucian Messina was born Dec. 13, 1928, in Detroit. His father, an autoworker, played guitar as a hobby and bought his son a guitar when he was 13.

Messina studied at Cass Tech, a high school known for its music program, before dropping out to work as a guitarist in Detroit’s jazz clubs. He led his own groups and performed with numerous visiting musicians. He joined the staff of WXYZ, a local ABC television affiliate, and played in the band on comedian Soupy Sales’s nightly TV show, backing up major jazz stars including Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

After seeing Messina perform at a jazz club, Gordy asked whether he would record for his Motown label. Messina was one of the few White musicians in the Funk Brothers, whose lineup often changed.

When Motown moved its operations to Los Angeles in 1972, Messina stayed in Detroit. He stopped performing and opened a carwash and jewelry business before returning to music 30 years later. He continued to lead jazz jam sessions at his home until shortly before his death.

The Funk Brothers were all but unknown to record buyers but emerged from anonymity in director Paul Justman’s 2002 documentary film, “Standing in the Shadows of Motown.”

The film, built around a reunion concert in Detroit, profiled 13 of the Motown session players, several of whom had already died. Eight members of the group, including Messina, went on tour for two years.

The Funk Brothers received two Grammys in 2003 for the film soundtrack and their remake of Gaye’s “What’s Going On” with singer Chaka Khan. They received a Grammy for lifetime achievement in 2004 and were inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2007. With Messina’s death, percussionist Jack Ashford is the last living member of the original 13 musicians.

Messina’s wife, Josie, died in 2009. Survivors include two children; four grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

Messina, who considered himself a jazz man, often told people that he regarded his work with Gordy as little more than a job.

“When we got to Europe, people knew more about us and our songs than I did,” he once said. “Of course, I never knew much about our songs anyway because I recorded them, and when I left the studio, I didn’t have a chance to play them again. … When we had rehearsals, they’d say we’re going to do such-and-such a song, and I would ask them, ‘How does it go?’ because I had no idea.”