There is so much laughter and genuine affection between the subjects of Paul Justman's Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002) that it is very easy to forget the Academy Award® nominated documentary is meant to be a heartbreaker. Not a behind-the-scenes look at Berry Gordy, Jr.'s home-based Motor City hit factory per se, the film is rather a belated championing of the session musicians who backed such Sixties chart toppers as Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops, the Temptations, the Jackson 5, Martha and the Vandellas and Gladys Knight and the Pips (to name but a few frontrunners from Gordy's stable of R&B thoroughbreds). The economic upturn following the Second World War led to an expansion of America's automotive industry. In search of a better standard of living, many southern blacks migrated northward, with the car factories of Detroit a particular magnet for the southern Diaspora.

A former boxer and Korean War veteran, Gordy had tried his hand at running a record store but the failure of that enterprise threatened to consign him to the local Lincoln-Mercury plant until a chance meeting with Jackie Wilson set the course of his professional career. As a record producer, Gordy discovered The Miracles (then called the Matadors) and in 1959 founded his first record label, Tamla Records. A year later, he launched a second label, Motown, and later folded the pair into the Motown Record Corporation.

Operating out of the 3-track recording studio installed in the dirt floor garage of a former photographic studio on West Grand Boulevard (later dubbed Hitsville, USA), Gordy began drafting a house band for his growing roster of recording artists. Early hires included Birmingham, Alabama-born jazz drummer Benny Benjamin, pianist Joe Hunter from Tennessee, guitarist Eddie Willis from Grenada, Mississippi and bass player James Jamerson, who had migrated to Detroit at the age of 18 from Edisto Island, off the coast of South Carolina. Memphis-born Richard "Pistol" Allen had come north to learn engineering until the siren call of jazz made a drummer out of him. Uriel Jones had been a horn player until a side interest in boxing ruined his lip and necessitated a switch to the drums. The Funk Brothers, as the house band came to be called, comprised a baker's dozen musicians (including white players Joe Messina from The Soupy Sales Show band and Bob Babbitt, a one-time semi-professional wrestler), some of whom had to adjust to the arduous demands of session recording in "the Snake Pit." (Vibes player Jack Ashford was asked for one tune to pick up a tambourine, which became his signature instrument – most notably on the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love" and Edwin Starr's "War.") Working twelve and fourteen hour days, seven days a week (their evenings occupied by club dates), the Funk Brothers had little time to reflect on the quality of their assignments. The musicians plugged through The Contours' "Do You Love Me" thinking the novelty song didn't have a chance, only to see the single become a Billboard Top 10 hit. Of the immortal introductory guitar lick of the Temptations' "My Girl," guitarist Robert White confessed "When I originally played it... I didn't think much about it. Only that it worked."

Standing in the Shadows of Motown is based on a book of the same name, published in 1987 by the Hal Leonard Corporation and recipient of the 1989 Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award. Written by Grammy-winning session musician Allan Slutsky, the book was part guitar tutorial (complete with accompanying CDs) and part biography of Funk Brother James Jamerson, who only began to receive recognition as the soul of the Motown sound after his untimely death in 1983.

It took Slutsky eleven years to raise $3 million in financing for a feature-length documentary. Along the way, he retained music video director Justman (an editor on the concert films Cocksucker Blues [1972] and Chuck Berry: Hail, Hail Rock and Roll [1987]) and bided his time while the number of surviving Funk Brothers dropped from ten to eight. (Drummer Eddie Brown passed away in 1984, followed by second band leader Earl Van Dyke in 1992 and guitarist Robert White in 1994.)

Narrated by actor Andre Braugher (from a script by playwrights Ntozake Shange and Walter Dallas), Standing in the Shadows of Motown reunited the survivors for a reunion concert in Detroit and combines historical reenactments with on-camera testimonials, and archival and contemporary concert footage, as well as spirited jam sessions recorded in the Snake Pit a full generation after Motown quit Hitsville, USA in favor of downtown Detroit offices and a subsequent shift west to Los Angeles. Shooting Standing in the Shadows of Motown coincided with one of the worst winters in Detroit history, requiring the Funk Brothers, the film crew and their guests to bundle up indoors. They also had to deal with a burst pipe that flooded the stage of one of the reunion venues.

Standing in the Shadows of Motown was released by Artisan Entertainment, whose Buena Vista Social Club (1999) had also received an Oscar® nomination for "Best Documentary Feature." Defeated for that honor by Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine (2002), Standing in the Shadows of Motown did receive a Grammy award for "Best Compilation Soundtrack Album" and was lauded by the New York Film Critics Circle for "Best Non-Fiction Film." Sadly, drummer Richard "Pistol" Allen and keyboard player Johnny Griffith both died before the film's November release. The Funk Brothers original bandleader Joe Hunter passed away in 2007 and latecomer Uriel Jones succumbed to a heart attack in 2009, whittling the original thirteen down to four as of this writing. While the history of soul music has, at least in the writing, been less than generous with the Funk Brothers, time and tide have had no less an effect on the headliners who got all the glory. The alcohol and drug-related deaths of Benny Benjamin and James Jamerson aside, the remainder of the Funk Brothers lived quiet, uncontroversial lives while such Motown all-stars as Marvin Gaye, Jackie Wilson, Tammi Terrell, Mary Wells, Florence Ballard, Jimmy Ruffin, Temptations cofounder Paul Williams, and even Michael Jackson died in dire financial straits or amid protracted controversy and litigation. Those highly publicized tragedies are not the sum and substance of Standing in the Shadows of Motown, which foregrounds The Funk Brothers for the first and last time in recorded history, allowing all thirteen, living and dead, a measure of overdue recognition and respect.

Producer/Director: Paul Justman
Screenplay: Walter Dallas, Ntozake Shange (narration), based on the book by Alan Slutsky
Cinematography: Lon Stratton, Douglas Milsome
Art Direction: Amy Yaroch-Carroll
Film Editing: Anne Erikson
Cast: Richard 'Pistol' Allen, Jack Ashford, Bob Babbitt, Benny 'Papa Zita' Benjamin, Eddie 'Bongo' Brown, Bootsy Collins, Johnny Griffith, Ben Harper, Joe Hunter, Chaka Khan, Joe Messina, James Jamerson.
BW&C-108m.

by Richard Harland Smith

Sources:
Standing in the Shadows of Motown: The Life and Music of Legendary Bassist James Jamerson by Allan Slutsky
Interview with Paul Justman and Allan Slutsky by Greg Burk, LA Weekly
"Tracks of My Tears: A Happy ending for a few of Motown's Funk Brothers," by Raoul Hernandez, Austin City Chronicle, November 15, 2002
Interview with Eddie Willis by Zeth Lundy, Popmatters.com