"We were doing great," Universal Music chairman Doug Morris once said to me about making soul records in the early '60s. "Then Motown came along with that moving bass line and wiped us all out."
The perpetrator wasn't that anonymous. James Jamerson now resides in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I'd argue that among rock and soul players, only Jimi Hendrix and maybe Keith Moon compare with him in revolutionary influence.
Legend makes Jamerson a wild man, which Standing in the Shadows of Motown, the new film about the Funk Brothers, as Motown's studio band called itself, does much to confirm. The Funk Brothers contained a batch of other distinct personalities: drummers Benny Benjamin, Richard "Pistol" Allen and Urield Jones, percussionists Eddie "Bongo" Brown and Jack Ashford, the guitar team of Eddie Willis, Joe Messina and Robert White, latter-day bassist Bob Babbitt, keyboard players Joe Hunter, Earl Van Dyke and Johnny Griffith. Every Motown hit from "Money" to "What's Going On" featured some assemblage of these men. Until the What's Going On album put them in the credits, nobody knew their names. But every serious Motown fan knew their pesonalities. (Listen for Jack Ashford's tambourine licks on any Motown hit to see why.)
Alan "Dr. Licks" Slutsky wrote a book about Jamerson, also called Standing in the Shadows of Motown. Startled to learn so much about the band, determined to let them tell their stories in a movie. Al went through almost a decade of setbacks but never let the project slip away. Finally, he and director Paul Justman put together several days shooting in Detroit, based around a two shows featuring the Funks and contemporary singers like Eddie LeVert, Meshell Ndegeocello, Bootsy Collins, Ben Harper, Chaka Khan and Joan Osborne.
We know these guys can play the songs. We know just as well that without Jamerson, Benjamin, Van Dyke and White, all now dead, it can't be the same, and that, anyway, playing the songs isn't the same as inventing the records. Still, Bootsy establishes a clear lineage from Little Richard to the Contours to the P-Funk, Osborne does the best singing of her career, Harper has never been recorded as soulfully.
The revelations come in the stories that the Funk Brothers tell about their origins, their philosophy of music, what they learned from each other, why Motown grew as it did, what happened when the hit factory closed up shop and moved to L.A. The stories don't show how much they loved the music-I'm not sure that all of these jazzmen did entirely love the music, though they're rightly proud of it. But the yarns they spin show how much they cared about each other and how that love and respect for one another lies at the core of their sound.
You've probably heard some of it your whole life-workplace banter about this guy's loopiness, that guy's drinking, the awe for the way a particularly skilled craftsmen used his tools, why the crew lacked respect and got cheated out of riches, how the company finally abandoned them. Out of these materials, the Funk Brothers forged bonds that bind them to time and place and one another. Because of the particular work they did, they're bound to a whole generation, also.
By the end of the film, Joe Hunter, a piano player in a Detroit lounge in the first scene, seems sage. Urbane Jack Ashford clarifies the intellect that led him to become a jazz musician, and the wit and hunger that let him pour all his heart into playing the tambourine. Pistol Allen and Uriel Jones serve as taskmasters, schooling the viewer. The film offered these men their moment in the spotlight and they seize without wasting a second. It figures-that's how they played.
The other day, I stood at a drugstore counter. "Heatwave" came on the counter and while I waited for the prescription, I realized I finally knew the answer to the song's great question. I don't have high blood pressure, so this must be the way love's supposed to be. Every scene of Standing in the Shadows of Motown tells me the same thing.
(Standing in the Shadows of Motown opens November 7.)
Deskscan (what's playing in my office)
1. Dirty South Hip-Hop Blues, Chris Thomas King (21st Century Blues)- Southern to its bones, a sort of halfway point between B.B. King and Outkast. All the music with the except of a few samples (of people like Son House and Robert Johnson was performed by King. I keep wanting to compare this to Stevie Wonder, but there isn't that level of jazz/classical-level harmonic/melodic ambition. Instead, the idea is to take the beats of yesterday and today and fuse them with total insight into the feelings that generated them (and that they generate). Over the last four minutes, he's like a one-man Public Enemy, if Chuck D and the Bomb Squad had hired Catfish Collins or Eddie Hazel or somebody to do the guitar licks or, actually, scratches.
2. The Best of Warren Zevon (Elektra)-Farewell, brother. I'd send lawyers, guns and money if it'd help.
3. Nothing to Fear, A Rough Mix by Steinski (bootleg)
4. The Rising, Bruce Springsteen (Sony)
5. Live At Sugar Hill, Vol. 2, John Lee Hooker (Fantasy)-Hooker in 1962, at the peak of his growling form; this might be the best I ever heard him play guitar. Rummaging through his entire repertoire, which amounts to blues history up to that moment, from "Bottle Up and Go" and "Jelly Jelly" to "You Don't Miss Your Water" and "Five Long Years," ("Volume I" is part of the collection titled Boogie Children.)
6. Jerusalem, Steve Earle (E Squared)
7. The Lost Tapes, Nas (Columbia)
8. Revolverution, Public Enemy (Koch)-Restores my faith in hip-hop as exquisite urban noise.
9. The Naked Ride Home, Jackson Browne (Elektra)
10. Blessed In an Unusual Way, David Childers (Ramseur, www.davidchilders.com)--A Childers merges Pentecostal fervor into what's now called alt-country, which James Talley deems in "the tradition of Dock Boggs and the primitive musicians of the '30s and '40s." Damn straight.
11. Shootout at the OK Chinese Restaurant, Ramsay Midwood (Vanguard)
12. Pachuco Boogie featuring Don Tosti (Arhoolie)
13. When Lightnin' Struck the Pine, Cedell Davis (Fast Horse Recordings)
14. Home, Dixie Chicks (Columbia)
15. Down in the Alley, Alvin Youngblood Hart (Memphis International)
16. "The Talking Sounds Just Like Joe McCarthy Blues," Chris Buhalis (demo)-Buhalis: "Give me liberty or give me death." Ashcroft: "Don't tempt me." P.O. Box 2896 Ann Arbor MI 48106 or chrisbuhalis.com. A patriotic $5
17. The Deep End Vol. 2, Gov't Mule (ATO)
18. Sleepless, Peter Wolf (Artemis)
19. Dope & Glory: Reefer Songs der 30er & 40er Jahre (Trikont, Ger; 2 discs)-Liner booklets s in both German and English but if you can tell them apart, you're missing the point. Pick hits: "I'm Gonna Get High," Tampa Red; "Sweet Marihuana Brown," Barney Bigard; "Dopey Joe," Slim & Slam; "All Teed Up," Sam Price
20. 'Tis the Season for Los Straitjackets (Yep Roc)-An always-timely blend of holiday tunes and surf instrumentals. Although I hear "La Bamba" too.
(c) Copyright 2000 Dave Marsh
Syndicated by ParadigmTSA
