Detroit's One And Only Funk Brothers

Motown had some great songs and some great players. Being a white kid in Detroit at a private school in the mid sixties wasn't just a challenge, it was laughable for me at least. Rockin' out to the MC-5, getting to hang with Mitch Ryder, watching Iggy bleed and hearing Motown change was heady stuff for a kid who had finagled his first set of drums by getting all "A's" and first seat as a trumpet player in the school band. I was playing trumpet pieces written for classical music and marches during school hours while wrestling with classical literature and Greek by day, teaching myself drums at night playing to Booker T and the MGs and Ramsey Lewis Trio records and going to clubs to listen. No easy feat for a kid who was 5' 5 1/2", 189lbs, all stuffed into a suit that made me look like the Michelin Man and just as white. I was not a hit in Detroit. Not in 1966. I never knew just how much Motown's Funk Brothers had influenced me.

If you have ever listened to music from that period, pre-Beatles, you have tapped your foot to the Funk Brothers. If you haven't heard the music you have tapped to their influence. If you haven't tapped your foot (or tried to shake your hips) get an EKG. You need it.

They are Motown's unsung heroes. Known as The Funk Brothers, the studio band put the backbeat into hits for Diana Ross & The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, etc. They played on more #1 records than The Beatles, Beach Boys, Rolling Stones and Elvis Presley combined, but no one knew their names.

Then you get to the artists that the Funk Brothers played for and with that weren't as famous, but created what was known as the Motown Sound before Phil Specter's wall-of-sound, the wah-wah pedal and other techniques. The players who were from Memphis, Tuscaloosa, the fields of Georgia and every no count town in between worked Detroit day jobs and jammed, formed bands and played late into the night often going straight to their day job after a gig. Players like Eddie Floyd, Mable John, Big Joe Turner and Little Willie John (Fever) were all crashing their styles together in small clubs and back rooms before Barry Gordy and his secretary Martha Reeves ever showed up. Thus the Funk Brothers were born.

Gordy was cleaning up "negro" music to appeal to the much larger white audience. It was a very smart business move. Gordy created a "transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues" so successfully that Dusty Springfield, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and even Pat Boone were stealing riffs, sounds and entire songs to make them stars. Gordy, born into a middle class family, also decided that the soul musicians recording with him needed discipline, style and his work ethic. He brought in experts to shape the onstage persona's of groups like the Marvlettes, the Supremes and Sam Cooke. He also brought union methods to corral and control "his" musicians through exclusive contracts for everything including performers and studio musicians. In my opinion, Gordy got very rich by making the Detroit sound suck.

The Funk Brothers were sneaking all over Detroit playing studio sessions for everybody they could as Gordy's thugs chased them, threatened them and "fired" them. Sometimes the Funk Brothers would do multiple recording sessions in one day and still play the clubs at night. Gordy fired them as a group and individually more times than he got married and divorced which is no easy accomplishment, but even the "genius" Gordy knew that he needed them more than they needed him. Gordy got rich and created fame (while denying them to the Funk Brothers), but the Funk Brothers made history and a sound that will outlive the saccharine sounds of Motown Detroit and the even worse Motown LA.

I'm writing this because late last night I watched "Standing in the Shadows/Motown" about the Funk Brothers. What an incredible documentary. I cannot recommend it more highly. I bought the soundtrack faster than a Ronco slicer and suggest you do the same. You can get it HERE and forgo that EKG as you start tapping from start to end. Come on, you know you really hate to love hearing Bootsy Collins sing "Cool Jerk", but you do, don't you? Where are my star glasses when I need them.

Notable members of the Funk Brothers
Early members included bandleader Joe Hunter and Earl Van Dyke (piano); James Jamerson (bass guitar); William "Benny" Benjamin and Richard "Pistol" Allen (drums); Robert White, Eddie Willis, and Joe Messina (guitar); Jack Ashford (tambourine, percussion, vibes, marimba); Jack Brokensha (vibes, marimba); and Eddie "Bongo" Brown (percussion). Hunter left in 1964, replaced on keyboards by Johnny Griffith and as bandleader by Van Dyke. Around the same time Uriel Jones joined the band as a third drummer.
In 1967, guitarists Dennis Coffey and Melvin "Wah-Wah Watson" Ragin, who introduced the wah-wah pedal sound that defined Motown's psychedelic soul records, joined the band. Benny Benjamin died the next year, and Bob Babbitt began to replace James Jamerson on many recording dates. The Funk Brothers were a racially integrated band. Most members were black; Messina, Brokensha, Babbitt, and Coffey were white.

Richs, Race and Relationships

The first two rules of holes

Similarly — as I noted in the post — there are a complexity of issues
involved in what are most frequently trotted out as racial disparities. You
bring up redlining without saying exactly with what about the practice you take
offense. Is it the fact that the subprime loans are granted in the first placde?
Or the fact that they are granted disproportionately to minorities?
The reason why Blacks (or Hispanics) find themselves with lower credit ratings
isn’t, I don’t think, intrinsic to race. We can trace the policies that got us
there, but they are many and varied.

I argued some of these particular instances several years ago with
Aaron Hawkins of Uppity Negro (who has since passed away), including
disproportionate traffic stops for Blacks in certain areas, etc.

...

But overall, it’s been my contention that policies that tend to focus
on fixing “racial disparity” — when the solution is tied solely to race (again,
I have written in favor of affirmative action based on opportunity) often times
do nothing but either exacerbate the disparity, or else have the effect of
creating a new group of victims or perceived victims, which in turn leads to a
stoking of racial animus.

Many years ago I did a study for a PAC that tracked certain racial groups and subsets within their racial group on the effect of government "help". In each case it was startling. One figure that has stuck in my mind was a comparison of black women and white women (aged 15-30, I think) that had children out-of-wedlock. Prior to the government "help" black women had a far lower rate of illegitimate birth than white women. After 20 years of government "help" those figures flipped completely. This study included years prior to the prevalence of abortion on demand.

My family is almost a mini-UN and I have found through experience with them and my extended family (and the history of my father's family) that accepting government largess is the first step toward failure, generally. In each case, within my family, it was an attitude that being on the "public dole" was to be shamed. Those who rose above that shame by getting off the "public dole" were believed to have not earned it.

Of those that refused the "dole", some stayed as working-poor, but proud. The majority became self sufficient and instilled that pride in their children and grand children. It is now our generation's job to carry on the pride. We like as little government as possible in our family's life.
I suggest you click on the above headline and read Jeff's full post and the comments. It will be well worth your time. If not, get the government to refund the cost of your time.

Make a Wonderful Weekend & 4th of July

Write a letter to a Marine and thank them for their service

rct-6lettersfromh@gcemnf-wiraq.usmc.mil

You'll feel better. The soldier will feel better. Especially if you ask others to write and ask them to ask others and so forth.

HT My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

What do we celebrate on the 4th of July? No not BBQ. Think. Just for a second.

Now do it. No, not right after whatever. Now, before you forget. Forgetting about our troops is just so liberal. Don't be a Pelosi.

Thank you.

The Lies About Rev. Jerry Falwell

I took a few days to digest the news. Actually, I ended up taking a few days to digest the hate.

There has been and will be written massive amounts of things about Rev. Fawell's life. Most of it is crap. There is no need to recap.

I knew Rev. Fawell briefly in the mid-eighties. I was working on campaigns through out the south eastern region of the US where Democrats had reigned supreme since before I had been born. Much like today's blue staters, the then still alive Rockefeller Republican Party looked down on southerners as ignorant, backward and not to be listened to as people. We conservatives who had worked our way up the Republican Party ranks thought differently.

My boss and others on the team took our candidates and message into the community, churches included, even funeral parlors which I learned had held considerable sway for Democrats for years. A meeting had been set up with Rev. Fawell. I was chosen to go. I still believe I was chosen because everybody on the team thought it quite a humorous picture envisioning me with a cigarette in one hand, a scotch in the other swapping dirty jokes with the Rev. I was none the less flattered.

I have never been treated with such respect.

Here I went, an Ohioan in Virginia to talk about the southern strategy. The Reverend, his staff and I were to meet for approximately 45 minutes. We met for three hours. There was a political axiom that when promised 100 volunteers, plan on ten showing up. I was promised a hundred and got 500, all of whom were ready to work and they worked over time for months growing to thousands.

I spoke with the Reverend periodically and he asked pertinent questions, offered more help and advice and soon started teaching me. He taught me about people. He taught me about rural America. For once, I actually listened to the teacher.

Against all of the then current perceptions, we, as Republicans, won the south for the first time since reconstruction. As a team, we hooted and hollered and finally sat back exhausted. Yes, I had a cigarette in one hand and a very stiff scotch in the other. As I remember it was a long night.

After the election I saw Reverend Falwell a few times and each time he was gracious in his congratulations of work well done and remembered to ask about friends, family and goals I didn't remember mentioning. He not once took an ounce of credit for the elections he won for our team. He once did ask me if I had found the courage to quit smoking and drinking.

To you Reverend Falwell, I say thank you for entering my life and though you may not fully approve, last night in the quiet I raised a glass to you as I had the final smoke of the evening.

This poor sinner misses you.