Willie Hutch

William McKinley Hutchison was born in Los Angeles, California on December 6, 1944. He was raised in Dallas, Texas. Hutch started his career writing, producing and arranging songs for the soul group The 5th Dimension.

Hutch signed with RCA records in 1969 where he released two albums, Soul Portrait in 1969 and Season For Love in 1970.
He was then noticed by Motown producer Hal Davis who asked him to write lyrics for the Jackson 5 song “I’ll Be There”.

Hutch was signed to Motown as a staff writer, producer, arranger and musician by Motown CEO Berry Gordy after the success of “I’ll Be There”. At Motown, Hutch co-wrote songs for the likes of Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson.
In 1973 he released Fully Exposed and recorded and produced the soundtrack for the blaxploitation film The Mack. In 1974 he recorded the soundtrack for another blaxploitation film Foxy Brown. Hutch continued to release albums off of Motown until 1977, when he left for Whitfield Records. He released In Tune in 1978 and Midnight Dancer in 1979 before returning to Motown in 1982. When back at Motown he recorded songs for the 1985 film The Last Dragon.

Many of Hutch’s tracks have been sampled in hip hop music. Some of the tracks that were created by sampling his music include, Dr. Dre’s “Rat-tat-tat-tat”, UGK’s “International Player’s Anthem”, Three 6 Mafia’s “Stay Fly” and Mobb Deep’s “Still Shinin'”.

Willie Hutch died on September 19th, 2005. He was 60 years old. His legacy lives on through his music and his six children.