Standing in the Shadows of Motown
I had been thinking of doing a Journal Club post today, but that seems like an awfully heavy thing to leave up over the holiday weekend (and while I may check email and comments, I won't be posting anything new before Sunday night). Also, I didn't actually read any of the articles I printed out to write up...
So, instead, we'll stick with the pop music theme for a bit, and I'll comment on the movie Standing in the Shadows of Motown, which was loaned to me by one of the guys I play hoops with at lunchtime.
The movie is a documentary about the "Funk Brothers," who were the house band for Motown during their Detroit heyday. This is a bunch of guys who, as the film says several times, " played on more number ones hits than the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Elvis and the Beatles combined," and yet, nobody's ever heard of most of them. They were mostly guys recruited from jazz clubs in the Detroit area, brought in to crank out an incredible string of hits for other people.
There's an incredibly sad story in the film (or one of the extras-- I'm not sure which, now) about one of the producers going to dinner with one of the guitarists, Robert White, and hearing the opening bars of "My Girl" come on the radio in the restaurant. White starts to tell the waiter, "Hey, I'm the guy who played that riff," and stops, because he knows that he won't be believed. It's one of the most recognizable song intros in pop history, but the guy who played it was anonymous.
The movie sets out to correct that, both by bringing the surviving Funk Brothers together to tell their stories, and by staging (and filming) a concert with the band playing Motown classics, with (more or less) current singers supplying the vocals. The remarkable thing about the movie (or maybe just the editing) is that they don't come off as particularly bitter about their lack of recognition. The one point in the story where they really seem upset is when Berry Gordy shuts down the Detroit studios without warning, and moves to LA (the fact that neither Gordy nor any other label brass appear in the movie is probably telling). Other than that, it's mostly happy reminiscence, and musicians talking shop.
The inside look at the Motown operation is fascinating. It really was a hit factory, with songs controlled by the label and doled out to singers a few at a time, while the band worked long hours churning out records in a basement studio (the "Snake Pit"). They weren't paid particularly well (one of the funniest stories in the film concerns their habit of sneaking out after hours to play in jazz clubs and for other studios), but they did a lot to shape the sound. Credit for Motown's run of hits has traditionally gone to the songwriters, Smokey Robinson and Holland/ Dozier/ Holland in particular, but the film makes a good case for the band as a key element. It's certainly striking to note that the vast majority of the label's best stuff was played by the same bunch of guys.
It was also fascinating to learn the make-up of the band (which I never really knew, as they aren't credited very often). I had never realized the amount of duplication in the band-- they had three guitarists, two keyboard players, and two drummers-- but I was also surprised at some of the specialization-- one guy, Jack Armstrong, mostly just played tambourine.
They also had some real genius in the band-- one of the better moments has a surviving Funk Brother talking shop with a couple of current musicians, about the bass line in "What's Going On," played by the late, great James Jamerson. He tells one of the two to lie down on the floor, hands him an electric bass, and says "play that line." After a few fumbling notes, the guy says he can't do it. "Well, that's how it was recorded," is the reply. Supposedly, Marvin Gaye got the idea for the song late at night, and tracked Jamerson down in a club somewhere. When they got him into the studio, he was too drunk to stay on the stool he usually sat on, so he lay down on the floor to play a bass line that, apparently, many people can't play standing up.
The best testament to the band's talent comes in the concert footage, or, rather, the contrast between the all-star concert in which they play Motown songs, and the footage of them playing together in a jazz club. It's particularly striking with the keyboardists-- in the jazz club, pianist Joe Hunter is lively and innovative, ranging all over the keyboard. In the concerts, he mostly plays blocky chords, rarely moving more than a few keys in one direction or another. It really makes you appreciate how tightly controlled those songs are.
And yet, when they play the old songs, there's a certain genius in tightly controlled, blocky chords. The songs stand up, even in the face of some uninspiring vocal performances, particularly from Chaka Khan (though, to be fair, Gerald Levert does a nice job).
If you like Motown, or just like to hear musicians talking shop, this a fascinating movie. If you don't like Motown, well, watch it anyway, and maybe you'll pick up some culture...
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