The Funk Brothers - the heartbeat of Motown (singer, bass)

[Whatsitoosit]

I did a quick search and didn't see a thread for these guys... if I missed it, my apologies to the mods.

So "The Funk Brothers", to anybody unaware, were a group of jazz musicians from Detroit that were compiled by Motown founder Berry Gordy. These guys played on pretty much every Motown hit you can think of and (in that time) weren't credited on any of the singles or albums up until 1970 when "What's Going On" was released. They were paid studio musicians and that was that.

The member list is pretty long as through the years new members were added or a few members passed on. you can see the involved story and lists HERE. The most notable member was James Jamerson who, to most, is considered the greatest bassist of all time... a claim to which I can understand and almost agree with. HERE is an example of his basswork (isolated from the track "What's Going On").

This past weekend I watched the documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" about the Funk Brothers... I strongly recommend it to any fan of the Motown genre. It really shows how "the Motown sound" wasn't about the room they recorded in, or the artist that sang on the records... it was clearly about these particular musicians and how skilled they were for pop/r&b music.

****, I just realized this could also be in the "Soul & Funk" section... my bad.