 |
The former music student from Philadelphia had made a name as a solid session guitarist and an even bigger one as Dr. Licks, the author of a series of respected guitar how-to books known as tablatures.
Then he decided to write a book about The Funk Brothers, the session musicians who made Motown's sound and who can be heard on everything from Heard it Through the Grapevine to Heatwave to Let's Get it On. They play the Edmonton Folk Music Festival mainstage tonight.
Standing in the Shadows of Motown was, through Slutsky's sweat equity, to become a decade-long project that concluded with the release of the same-name movie last year. It also provided Slutsky with the grist for a hit book and made the top former players, each a virtuoso musician in his own right, the stars they'd never been back in '60s and '70s Detroit.
Slutsky, who in a giddily joyful turn of events now plays with the band, focused on the most influential: Ivory Joe Hunter, Eddie Willis, Uriel Jones, Joe Messina, Jack Ashford and a handful of others.
The 700 or so other Motown session players haven't been too happy with the decision.
"That's become a problem of our own," said Slutsky, whose documentary has garnered awards and raves around the world, along with two Grammy nominations for its soundtrack. "Now everybody who ever played at Motown is pissed at me. They all say, 'Hey, I'm a Funk Brother, too. Where's my money?"
Rising from obscurity can make someone an easy target, particularly amongst those they left behind. But Slutsky is quick to point out that, despite Motown founder Berry Gordy's good intentions and comparatively high-paying gigs for the time, it wouldn't have been an issue had the Funk Brothers been recognized properly back in the day.
He cites James Jamerson, the original Funk Brothers bassist, who practically invented electric bass playing while backing up Jackie Wilson. He'd become one of the first to develop proper licks and style for the four-year-old Fender invention in 1958. Jamerson died in 1983 but "without him, bass playing as we know it today, in rock or soul or whatever, wouldn't exist. He was the first guy who gave a voice to the bass."
Without Slutsky's tenacity, the reformed Funks wouldn't exist either. He was trying to set down the Motown sound on paper, so that others could experience playing the '60s blues-jazz fusion that was to become modern soul music. Trouble was, no matter how perfectly he thought he'd figured out each song, they never quite sounded right.
So he went looking for the originators. "I couldn't believe that no one knew these guys and it kind of snowballed from there."
Ironically, he eventually ended up teaching some of the Funk Brothers their own songs again. Exceptional jazz musicians one and all, they'd often been dismissive towards Gordy's hit factory, cranking out the sessions during the day to make a living so that they could afford to spend their nights playing in jazz clubs.
"The amazing thing after all those years is they didn't remember the music. I had to transcribe it. A song like What Becomes of the Broken Hearted may live in our collective memory, but to these guys, it's just a song they played one time 40 years ago. And they've never played it again.
"As soon as I showed it to them, they'd pick it right up again and you'd see these signs of happy recognition, where a smile would kinda cross their lips and they'd say, "Oh, yeah man, I remember that piece."
The fact that the Funks didn't generally hit the stage with the big stars means that, to some extent, many of Motown's biggest fans have never heard them play. The way they played was continually influenced - and altered - by Gordy's production style: big, fast, to the wall.
"Berry had a different concept. He was Vegas. His tempos were too fast and he wanted everything to be energy, energy, energy. But that's not really the Motown sound."
The true Motown sound, Slutsky contends, is unlearnable, a strange combination of the most technically adept jazz musicians playing and improving pop licks that seemed complex but which they found relatively simple. It was the ease of play that made the music, the comfort in sounding effortless.
Ironically, recapturing that involved bringing in session singers, three of whom replace the vocal stars during shows like the folk fest, while joining six original Funks, Slutsky, and a horn section. Just as the Funk Brothers were content once to shun the limelight, the singers "knew the deal coming in," said Slutsky.
No one is any more inclined to question their obscurity than the Funks themselves were to question Gordy's similar decision in the '60s. After all, says Slutsky, once the Funks hit the stage, everyone realizes who the stars are.
"They hit the stage, start playing their guts out and everybody just goes nuts.
"We decided to make a movie about musicians, and any time you do that you need the star or the producer or someone to be the bad guy. But we decided not to do that. Instead, we brought back guys who have contributed to music on a gigantic level. We made obscurity the bad guy."