The Smiley Smile Message Board

Motown's session musicians from the 1960s are as amazing as the wrecking crew.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt9chTzkp78
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUOI4ST6_tY&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke8IOXA0CaM&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85ukCg-p_L0&feature=relmfu

Far more amazing. Far, far more amazing.

James Jamerson's bass lines really drive these songs. I don't like Carol Kaye trying to take credit for James Jamerson's work.

If BW did Wild Honey with the Funk brothers... :thud

Not to me.

They would've laughed, said WTF (?), played and gone home.

I believe you.

And I probably wouldn't be on this board if I weren't a fan of what the L.A. musicians had done, too. But I would put the Motown guys above and beyond, especially their drum-bass-piano combos.

Both remarkable, obviously, and combined are responsible for an amazing percentage of country's hits throughout the '60s.

In terms of session dude status you cannot really compare guys like these (Except Jamerson is the absolute champion bass player of all time), but the Funk Brothers were a tighter and smaller collective than 'The Wrecking Crew', who were really just 'every guy in the AFM in the LA area'. The Funk Brothers didn't number more than 15-20 people over ten years (if Standing on the Shoulders of Motown is anything to go by), and they went out and played gigs in Detroit and on other peoples records. 'The Wrecking Crew' were never that sort of band. Or indeed, any sort of band outside of a studio.


This thread makes me want to listen to What's Going On...

I see what you're saying. America's produced some amazing sets of musicians. There was a great bunch of guys down in New Orleans, too.

Oh of course. And in many other places, besides. Honestly, if one thing about fandom bothers me in general, it's that people are exclusive about it. There is no shortage of brilliance.

I see no reason to diminish any other set of musicians to praise the Motown session players, but it wouldn't be hard to say they're the best.  Folks should all watch "Standing in the Shadow of Motown" -- by no means a great doc (modern performances by grade B "stars"; could go a little deeper into the history IMO), but it does present their case as not only the premier even revolutionary players that they were, but also their uncredited arrangements and input into some of the most enduring and important (and great to listen to!) music ever.

I don't like saying one group is "better" than another, or something similar. They're session players, yes, but what they did in the situations they were in could be considered different enough to make a fair comparison between these groups impossible.

I think it does diminish one over the other, and it's not a positive thing to do that. How about the New York guys? There were some amazing players that don't get mentioned. Vinnie Bell, "Pretty" Purdie, go down the list of all the guys that played on Bacharach, Four Seasons, etc. records from the 60's.

Even more striking is Nashville in the 50's and 60's, a hit-making machine...how about that group of guys like "Pig" Robbins and Floyd Cramer who played piano on damn near everything, how about Lloyd Green on pedal steel, Harold Bradley and earlier Hank Garland on guitar, Boots Randolph on sax...among the best session players ever. Do we compare them to the Wrecking Crew or the Funk Brothers? :) Amazing musicians.

What has to be remembered is that none...and I do mean *none*...of these groups were specifically organized as self-contained units or bands. The membership would vary as much as their availability and their ability to be the best choices for any given session would change daily. If a contractor thought a certain combination would fill a certain role for a producer, they'd call certain guys. If some were not available, they'd call others with similar skills. You'd only need to look at Brian Wilson's musician credits to see this play out: Was there really a "core group" of the same players on every session?

Motown perhaps came the closest to having the same core group, but even with Motown sessions...were Dennis Coffey and Marv Tarplin playing guitar on every session? Of course not, they filled different roles depending on the song.

I think the labeling of these groups as groups was done for convenience and to make easier the marketing and selling of the groups as a historical item. Basically the Wrecking Crew could have been at least 50 musicians in 1966...same with New York's musicians, or Nashville, or whatever.

And each of them had a strength or weakness. If a guy couldn't sight-read, he wouldn't get called to do a movie score that was all reading and no improv. But were the guys who could sight-read better than someone who could create a hook on the spot? Debate... :)

But it's impossible to rank groups that weren't actual groups until history needed a way to label them.

I agree with guitarfool. There were so many great "studio-bands" back then. I also love the Memphis boys (American Studios), Booker T & The M.G.'s and so on. The Nashville A-Team (Hank Garland, Bob Moore, Floyd Cramer a.m.o.) were some of the best musicians you could get in the early 60s anywhere. It's tragic what happened to Garland. He and Presley complemented one another perfectly; even better than Elvis and James Burton imho