Eddie Gillis (Edward Gillis)

Eddie Gillis died on 23 October 2026, aged 60, after a battle with cancer. The type of cancer and the length of his illness were not made public, and no funeral details had been announced at the time of the first reports.

His death was announced by Jack White in an Instagram post the same day. "The world lost a beautiful soul today," White wrote. "Ed was such a caring, funny and generous person that everybody loved." He added: "He was an amazing brother to me and i just hate to see him leave, but I'm glad he's at peace. God bless you Eddie." The Detroit News reported the death that evening, with memories from Ben Blackwell.

Edward Gillis, known as Eddie, grew up in southwest Detroit as the eighth of ten children of Gorman and Teresa Gillis, in a large Catholic family. His siblings included the musician John Gillis, later famous as Jack White of the White Stripes, who was the youngest of the ten.

Music was part of home life. Eddie played guitar as a young man, and Jack, who was then mainly a drummer, played music with him. In his tribute after Eddie's death, Jack White wrote that his brother had taught him "so many wonderful and simple things," including how to string a guitar, how to fish on the Detroit River and how to drive a stick shift. Gillis later said that he, like his brother, grew up in southwest Detroit and felt a deep tie to the city's musical history.

Gillis was active in Detroit's garage rock scene as the frontman of the lo-fi band Tin Knocker, and he played in a band called Catalyst with several of his brothers. He is credited with percussion on "The Denial Twist," a song by the White Stripes.

His main trade for many years was food. He worked as a pastry chef and cook, with jobs in the kitchen at Beaumont Hospital and at the Ritz-Carlton in Dearborn.

When Jack White built Third Man Pressing, the vinyl manufacturing plant behind the Third Man Records store on West Canfield Street in Detroit, he chose Eddie to run it. The plant opened in 2017. Ben Blackwell, White's nephew and business partner, later said Gillis had no history in record pressing or manufacturing, but he knew how to motivate people and run a team, and the rest could be learned.

As production and later operations manager, Gillis oversaw the plant's growth from pressing Third Man's own catalogue to taking on work for other artists and labels. By the mid 2020s it had 16 presses and about 60 employees. He compared the job to his years as a chef, telling the Detroit Free Press in 2022: "It's like a kitchen in here. It's experimentation for days, trying a little of this, a little of that, while you come up with a recipe." He spoke with pride about Third Man pressing Motown records in Detroit for the first time, and about bringing manufacturing jobs back to the Cass Corridor. Speaking in 2026, he said he had been at the plant for ten years and that it was never the same day twice.

Gillis was married to Angie Gillis, and the couple had two children, Amelia and Garrett. He was described as the fisherman of the family. Ben Blackwell, his godson, remembered Eddie teaching him to fish on the Detroit River and taking him to Detroit Red Wings games, including an overtime win over the Toronto Maple Leafs at Joe Louis Arena in 1994. At the pressing plant he enjoyed making small sculptures and flowers from vinyl scraps. His mother, Teresa Gillis, died in March 2026 at the age of 95.

Gillis is remembered as the steady hand who turned Third Man Pressing from an idea into a working Detroit factory at the height of the vinyl revival, and as a manager who built a team of people new to record making. Through Tin Knocker, Catalyst and his early influence on his youngest brother, he was also part of the family story behind one of Detroit's best known rock musicians.