Robert White was born in November 1936 in Billmeyer, Pennsylvania, and learned music from his uncle. He first toured with the vocal group the Moonglows, playing bass, which the hosts credit for his rhythm-first approach to guitar. In 1960 he moved to Detroit for steadier work, played sessions at Anna Records, and joined Motown’s Funk Brothers as one of three core guitarists with Joe Messina and Eddie Willis. Playing Gibson ES-335 and L5 hollow-body guitars, he covered the mid-range and drew on jazz guitarists Oscar Moore and Wes Montgomery for richer chord voicings.
In 1965 White wrote the opening guitar riff of the Temptations’ My Girl, a hook the credited songwriters did not get from the sheet music. In the mid-1970s he moved to Los Angeles, co-owned a recording studio, and in the 1980s toured as a backing guitarist for the Temptations, playing his own riff nightly. He died in Los Angeles in October 1994 at 57 after open-heart surgery, eight years before the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown featured his work.
- White’s rhythm guitar drives Marvin Gaye’s How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You).
- He played on Gaye’s What’s Going On.
- He supplied the driving rhythm on the Supremes’ You Keep Me Hangin’ On.
- He added delicate guitar texture to Stevie Wonder’s My Cherie Amour.
- Within the Funk Brothers, Eddie Willis handled sharp high off-beats while White filled the mid-range.
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