Hail, King James
WITH HIS 1962 FENDER PRECISION BASS, HE ‘WROTE THE BIBLE’
On this day and date, there can be no other subject.
It is when, in 1936, the greatest bass player in the world was born, on Edisto Island in South Carolina: James Lee Jamerson, Jr.
The greatest? Don’t take only my word. Last year, Rolling Stone anointed him as such, ahead of 49 others in the field. When you splice in the fact that, in a separate 2020 poll, the magazine also placed What’s Going On – on which Jamerson played – at the top of its “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list, the use of the superlative is best not challenged.
Top of the hot 100: James Jamerson
Rolling Stone observed that the musician “helped [to] revolutionize the field, jolting his parts with extra syncopation, additional chords that added melodic depth and complexity, and tonal choices that evoked gospel harmony.” Three years earlier, the editors of Bass Player – who better? – slotted him at the top of their 100-strong list of the greatest bass players. “James Jamerson wrote the bible on bass line construction and development, feel, syncopation, tone, touch and phrasing,” they noted, “while raising the artistry of improvised bass playing in popular music to zenith levels.”
To fully understand these technical descriptions? Just listen to “Bernadette.” Or “I Was Made To Love Her.” Or “You Can’t Hurry Love.” Or the last minute of Diana Ross’ full-length “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Or the hundreds of other recordings on which Jamerson can be heard, his genius appreciated, as one of the foundational players of the Motown house band from 1959-72.
And when the 50th anniversary of the release of What’s Going On arrives in a few months, we’ll be reminded that the original LP was significant for identifying all the musicians on it – a Motown first. Jamerson’s name was among them, the start of recognition that would lead eventually to public praise and worship, a legacy as strong as ever on what today would have been his 85th birthday.
The definitive account of this life, of musical triumphs and personal tragedies, is Allan Slutsky’s pioneering Standing in the Shadows of Motown: The Life and Music of Legendary Bassist James Jamerson.
A BENCHMARK OF CELEBRATION
Pioneering? Certainly, in the sense that it laid the groundwork not only for a righteous appreciation of Jamerson’s talent and influence, but also of the entire magic circle of Motown musicians. The subsequent adaptation of Slutsky’s book into the Standing in the Shadows of Motown documentary – he was one of its producers – yielded not only a successful movie, but also a new benchmark for celebrating those behind the scenes of popular culture.
A musician himself, Slutsky (whose pseudonym was Dr. Licks) could not have imagined all this at the beginning, any more than Jamerson or his compadres at 2648 West Grand could have done 20 years earlier. The project was initially conceived, he said, as “some vague plans to write a book of transcribed James Jamerson Motown bass lines.” Slutsky travelled to Detroit and Los Angeles in 1987-88 to interview Jamerson’s family, friends and acquaintances, inside and outside the music industry. In the process, the author learned and documented how triumph and tragedy, contradiction and conflict, had weaved themselves into Jamerson’s life in equal measure. He could not interview the man himself, of course: the bassist had died on August 2, 1983 in Los Angeles, of cirrhosis of the liver, heart failure and pneumonia. He was 47.
Marvin Gaye and James Jamerson, May 1972
Prior to Slutsky’s book, the best account of the musicians of Hitsville had come in the work of Nelson George, in both his 1985 best-seller, Where Did Our Love Go?, and an earlier article for Musician magazine, Standing in the Shadows of Motown (Slutsky freely acknowledged his debt to that title). George had interviewed Jamerson himself in 1982.
“I used acoustic bass and a Fender Precision bass on the sessions,” he told George. “I picked up playing electric bass in 1963 when I went on the road with Jackie Wilson, and I stayed in New York for a while with him before heading back to Motown. They would save stuff for me while I was away, cut the track without a bass or [use] a dummy bass, and I’d put the real part in.” Later, discussing his extraordinary synchronicity with drummer Benny Benjamin, Jamerson explained, “We didn’t need sheet music. I started to play. He started the beat. We’d look at each other and know whether we needed a triplet, quarter triplet or double time or whatever. We could feel the groove together.”
Standing in the Shadows of Motown was published in 1989 as an unusual text-and-cassette combination, with Jamerson’s biography given an extra dimension by recreations of his bass lines by a cross-section of contemporary musicians, ranging from Marcus Miller to John Entwistle, Chuck Rainey to Geddy Lee, Anthony Jackson to Phil Chen, and Motown’s Bob Babbitt to Jamerson’s own son, James Jr. Berry Gordy contributed the foreword, Paul McCartney the introduction to the “memorial tape,” as he called it.
A PLACE IN THE SUN
For Slutsky, Standing in the Shadows of Motown represented three years of 18-hour workdays and more than $60,000 in expenses. All the profits from the book’s 100,000 sales went to the Jamerson family and a scholarship fund at the late musician’s high school in Detroit. Turning the tale into a film documentary was even more demanding in terms of time, toil and money, but the final outcome, when released in 2002, was both a commercial and critical success – and, as mentioned, gave Motown’s so-called Funk Brothers their place in the sun.
The 21st century continued to lay garlands at their feet. After the induction in 2000 of Jamerson and Motown drummer Benny Benjamin into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, there followed a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award in 2004 and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013, among other honours. Moreover, the album soundtrack of Standing in the Shadows of Motown netted a couple of Grammys, while a permutation of surviving Funk Brothers performed in concert at home and abroad. From 2003-04, Slutsky and his movie-making partner, Sandy Passman, even managed them.
Allan Slutsky and James Jamerson Jr.
There was tragedy, too: Jamerson’s son – who, naturally, became a bass player – died in 2016 at the age of 58. He had been suffering from a degenerative spinal condition, and his earlier alcoholism (which had also afflicted his father) took its additional toll. Up to that point, James Jr. had prospered in music, touring in the ’80s and ’90s with such acts as Natalie Cole, the Crusaders, Smokey Robinson and Deniece Williams, and recording with other stars, including Bob Dylan. Too, he scored a hit of his own, “Don’t Hold Back,” as one half of Chanson in 1979, and fronted a multi-media touring show (“Standing in the Shadows of Motown Live!”) with Peabo Bryson and Leela James in 2013, which was put together with Slutsky.
“Junior had a good career,” said Slutsky, “but he always lived in his father’s inescapable shadow. It was tough on him, even though he deeply loved his dad.” The 2013 tour was “a huge artistic success, but didn’t draw that well. Junior was down and out, but played very well and was in his final period of some glory.”
Several years before, with Slutsky, Jamerson Jr. had visited the cemetery where his father was buried – and an anecdote allows for a brighter note on which to finish. “We both thought it would be cool to have the Jamerson book in the flower urn at the top of his grave,” Slutsky recalled. “I remember Junior joking with me, saying, ‘Hey man, if you hear a voice coming out of the ground saying, “Motherfucker, I didn’t play no C# in bar 17 of ‘Bernadette,’ ” that’s my dad.”
On this day and date, then, there can be no other subject.
Music notes: checking out James Jamerson’s unimpeachable bass lines depends on how many hours you can spare, given that he played on 90 percent (to say the least) of Motown’s output from 1959-72. In the physical world, the 2004 deluxe edition of the Standing in the Shadows of Motown soundtrack album offered highlights and insights, including track notes by the set’s producers, Allan Slutsky and Harry Weinger. On DSPs such as Spotify, that 43-track package doesn’t appear to be available, but Jamerson is amply represented elsewhere online, including this visualisation of his work by Jack Stratton. And the latest West Grand playlist features just a few JJ masterpieces, in case you’re short of time. Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Is Lifting Me) Higher And Higher” is included because the Funk Brothers were moonlighting from Motown for the session, as detailed here. The Sylvers’ “Boogie Fever” was one of Jamerson’s post-Motown assignments, for which producer Freddie Perren gave him a gold disc – his first.
Campaign notes: for a while, it looked as if Standing in the Shadows of Motown might have celluloid company. In 2014, a pair of South Carolina filmmakers, Paul Crutcher and Tom Neal, announced plans to produce James Jamerson and the Legend of the Funk Machine, about the 1962 Fender Bass with which he created so much. (The instrument was stolen from his Los Angeles home shortly before his death, and remains unrecovered.) Crutcher and Neal’s Wild Mercury Productions began approaching top-tier musicians to help tell the story, and launched a Kickstarter fundraising effort. Lately, though, there has been no news of progress. Meanwhile, Jamerson’s cousin, Anthony McKnight, continues with his drive to have a headstone installed at the bass king’s grave in Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery. Three-quarters of the required $10,000 funding has been raised, and the headstone is reportedly to be installed this spring. More details here.