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Movie Spotlights Unsung Motown Heroes
Motown Greats The Funk Brothers Jam
For A Movie About Their Careers
By Christopher Currie - South End Contributing Writer
The South End - The Official Student Newspaper of Wayne State University
October 25, 2002
A film crew goes into a record store and starts asking customers and clerks if they have ever heard of Stevie
Wonder, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson or the Temptations. For these questions, they all get affirmative
responses. But when the crew starts asking people about The Funk Brothers, everyone seems to be at a loss.
"Standing in the Shadows of Motown," due in theatres Nov. 15, hopes to change that.
The movie is a documentary about The Funk Brothers, a collective of professional musicians who were
responsible for the musical backdrop for all of Motown Records' great pop hits from the late '50s birth of the
label up until Berry Gordy moved the operation to California in the early '70s. Alan Slutsky, who authored a bio
of Motown bassist James Jamerson, was moved to pursue a film project to acknowledge these under-appreciated
(and for many, unknown) musicians.
Gordy, setting up shop in the now-legendary Hitsville Studio house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, went
searching for the best jazz & blues musicians he could find in Detroit, recruiting them from varying gigs to be
the house musicians for his upstart record label.
Studio A, where they recorded, was nicknamed "the snake pit." In there, all the Motown personalities from
Marvin Gaye to the Four Tops laid down their vocals to the Funk Brothers' melodies.
Contemporary interviews are done with the 10 surviving members, detailing their recollections on how they got
to be involved with the Motown "machine."
Joe Messina spent 14 years as a band player for Soupy Sales' Detroit TV show before being recruited.Uriel
Jones was an amateur boxer and trombone player before joining the band, at which point he chose to play the
drums. All of the Brothers are upbeat and eager to talk about their past.
"Nobody ever mentioned too much about us," said keyboardist Joe Hunter, who leads a local jazz ensemble.
The initial core group was comprised of bassist Jamerson, pianist Earl Van Dyke, drummer Benny Benjamin
and guitarists Robert White & Joe Messina; as years went by many more Funk Brothers would soon follow and
be a part of their unique fraternity. Those who have passed away are Jamerson, Van Dyke, White, Benjamin,
and Eddie 'Bongo' Brown.
The group would tour with Motown's marquee performers during the early '60s.During a UK tour, band
members were pleasantly surprised that there was a James Jamerson Fan Club among the crowd of English fans,
which lay a sharp contrast to the band's relative anonymity in the States.
Still, band members frequently moonlighted to supplement their income. They often put in session time at other
record labels, as well as performing at the local jazz and blues clubs where they started - much to Motown
execs' dismay, who often hired "spies" to alert them whenever someone was spotted at a "side gig."
The film shows a handful of dramatic recreations of a few of the Funk Brothers anecdotes. Among the more
humorous episodes was one where the band had to hide in a funeral parlor to catch a break from the relentless
schedule of the Hitsville producers. Less humorous was the session that was interrupted by the 1967 Detroit riot.
As Motown's fortunes soared toward the end of the '60s, the Funk Brothers, ironically, began to falter. As more
Motown artists began to record elsewhere than at Studio A, requests for session time began to dwindle for the
Brothers. The most damaging circumstance, though, was when Berry Gordy decided to move the Motown
operation to Los Angeles, partially because of his burgeoning interest in producing movies.
The announcement was abrupt, and caught all of the Brothers by surprise. Most of them did not make the
transition to the west coast. Subsequently, the band was defunct, though most did continue playing music.
"Shadows" goes one step further than VH-1's popular "Behind the Music" star bios. Interspersed with the
interviews is footage from a special reunion concert produced especially for the film (soundtrack CD in stores
now).
With the Funk Brothers as the backing band, contemporary singers do their interpretations of the great Motown
hits. Among them are Joan Osborne on "Heatwave," Ben Harper on "I Heard it through the Grapevine," Gerald
Levert on "I'll be There," Bootsy Collins on "Do you Love Me" and Me'shell N'Degeocello with "Cloud Nine."
Strangely, except for Martha Reeves, "Shadows" features no contemporary interviews from any of the surviving
Motown singers (where was Diana Ross? Mary Wilson?). Perhaps most incredibly, Berry Gordy is nowhere to
be found, either. In this regard, the movie is mildly disappointing.
Overall, the film is well put together. Slutsky's book was first published in 1989, and thus the film is billed as
being "14 years in the making." It is made clear that this project was a labor of love for the filmmakers, who
genuinely wanted to create a definitive document of the legacy of these Rock 'n' Roll pioneers. In that, they
succeed.
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