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Copyright 2002
The Detroit News.
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Wednesday, November 13, 2002
 Donna Terek / The Detroit News
Funk Brothers guitarists Eddie Willis, left, and Joe Messina, right, always had fun on Motown sessions and still have a tight bond onstage.
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Movie moves Motown band out of the shadows
Filmmaker's chronicle of the Funk Brothers' musical genius hits theaters Friday
By Susan Whitall / The Detroit News
For some Detroiters, the documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" will revive the soundtrack of their youth and make them cry for the musical heroes they never knew they had.
For younger music fans, the film is a crash course in how so many elements of Detroit life, such as the jazz scene and the auto industry, played a part in creating the Motown sound.
The film, which opens nationally Friday, has been a 15-year labor of love for Philadelphia writer/producer/guitarist Allan Slutsky. Most people agree that only someone with Slutsky's persistence and particular life skills, being both a working musician and a writer, could have pulled it off.
Slutsky's love of Motown began as a child and developed as he played Motown songs at bar mitzvahs and weddings.
What started Slutsky on his 15-year odyssey of trying to get a Funk Brothers film funded and filmed was the 1983 obituary in Rolling Stone about famed Motown bassist James Jamerson, written by musician Marshall Crenshaw, formerly of Berkley.
Jamerson's story haunted Slutsky, from the way the bass player set the inimitable bottom on all those Motown songs with a style of playing that hasn't been duplicated. Before his death, Jamerson was reduced to scalping a ticket to attend the "Motown 25" TV special in Los Angeles.
Slutsky starting writing the book "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" in 1986, telling Jamerson's story and having famous bassists such as Paul McCartney recreate the bassist's signature riffs on an accompanying cassette.
From there he discovered the story of Jamerson's bandmates, the unsung players who toiled away in Studio A. Soon the project started to exert a mystical pull on Slutsky.
"I was handed this through the ethereal mists of time," he once said, in answer to the question, "Why the Funk Brothers?"
"I'm a huge baseball fan, and this became my 'Field of Dreams,' " says Slutsky, 50. Instead of having a ghostly Joe Jackson and the 1919 Chicago Black Sox walk out of a cornfield, Slutsky set about tracking down the surviving Funk Brothers and assembling them in real life.
What he found, after numerous calls to the musicians' union, broke his heart. The Funk Brothers, a group of musicians who were the heartbeat of the Motown sound, had scattered to the winds, unknown and forgotten.
When Funks keyboard player Earl Van Dyke died in 1992, Slutsky says, "I was in full panic mode. I realized I was in a race against time. I had to get these guys the recognition they deserved, before more of them died."
He was in a race to document, on film, what the Funk Brothers did -- the immortal licks that created what became one of the major musical movements of the '60s.
The film features old footage taken at Hitsville, a lot of storytelling by the Funks, as well as live concerts filmed at the Royal Oak Theatre during the snowy winter of 2000-01.
The concerts capped months of rehearsal in a pine-paneled basement belonging to a friend of Slutsky's, Craig Weiland. Slutsky slept on a couch in Weiland's basement as he wrote sheet music, put the Funks through their paces, and lined up the acts who would perform with the Funks: Joan Osborne, M'shell Ngedeocello, Bootsy Collins, Chaka Khan and others.
The Funk Brothers hadn't been in the same room for 30 years, and there were tears as they gathered and caught up with each other.
Last week, Slutsky was, as usual, in the eye of the storm, writing out sheet music, rehearsing, playing guitar and conducting the Funk Brothers at the Apollo Theater in Harlem for the film's world premiere. It was an emotional homecoming of sorts as the Funks had backed up Motown acts there during the '60s.
Adding to the emotional tension, ailing keyboard player Johnny Griffith couldn't play, but watched as the Funk Brothers -- guitarists Joe Messina and Eddie Willis, drummer Uriel Jones, vibrophonist/percussionist Jack Ashford, keyboard player Joe Hunter -- talked with members of the New York media and performed onstage.
Toward the end of the show, Ashford told the audience Griffith was in the balcony, and pointed there as people applauded wildly. Ashford didn't know until later that Griffith had returned to his hotel during the show.
Griffith, 66, died of an apparent heart attack Sunday morning at Detroit Receiving Hospital.
"Johnny was dying, and we didn't even know it," Ashford says, sadly.
Marshall Crenshaw, whose Jamerson obit spurred the whole project in the first place, was a revelation, bounding onstage in a porkpie hat to sing Marvin Gaye's "Wonderful One." "It'll be a miracle if I'm still standing at the end of this," Crenshaw said as he kicked into the uptempo song.
In a limo traveling along the Hudson River back uptown to a Times Square hotel, guitarist Joe Messina admitted that it was his first trip to New York.
Saxophonist Tom Scott was incredulous. "How can that be?"
"I had a studio gig, so I didn't have to leave Detroit," Messina says.
"Well you're on the road now, buddy," Scott teases. "You're a rock star now. You did it backwards."
Because chunks of the Funk Brothers are gone, Slutsky has augmented them with some Philly soul stalwarts, including Philadelphia International backup singers Johnny Ingram and Carla Benson, and Benson's brother, drummer Keith, who played on the Philly soul classic "Ain't No Stopping Us Now."
The other Funks backup singer, Delbert Nelson, works for the United Auto Workers in Detroit, and the electrifying conga player, Treaty Womack, also is a Detroiter.
At the Detroit premiere on Sunday, bassist Bob Babbitt looked somber as he got out of a limousine that took the Funk Brothers to the Uptown Palladium in Birmingham. They were greeted by a VIP audience that included Duke Fakir of the Four Tops, several Velvelettes and many of Detroit's R&B community.
"Johnny died this morning!" Babbitt told friends. As Slutsky announced the death to the premiere audience at the Palladium, there were shocked cries of "oh no!" and some crying.
With news of Griffith's death still a fresh wound, percussionist Ashford spoke at the Detroit premiere party that followed at the Roostertail about the accolades reaching them "at the end of our journey."
Meanwhile, reaction to the movie has been uniformly positive. "I loved it. It was wonderful seeing the guys who backed us up on all of our hits," says the Tops' Fakir. For Esther Gordy Edwards, who serves as executive director of the Motown Historical Museum, it was her life unfolding up there on the screen.
"That's my handwriting!" Edwards exclaimed, as a montage of schedules and sheet music for the Motortown Revue filled the screen.
Back in the '60s, Edwards traveled with the Motortown Revue, a nightmarish proposition considering the logistics of that many people traveling by bus and the high spirits of the young Motown stars eager to have a good time.
"It's so accurate," Edwards says of the film. "I lived it, I know. And I think it's really going to stimulate interest in Motown music when people around the world see it."
"I've got to go back and tell everybody at the museum about this," Edwards says excitedly. "I think we'll get more visitors as a result."
One line in the movie had singer Martha Reeves fuming. It came from session drummer Steve Jordan, who remarks that the Funk Brothers were so good, "Deputy Dawg could have sung in front of the Motown band and sounded good."
Reeves called out "That's not true!" Told that, Jordan laughed. "When I said it, I thought of Martha," he said between rehearsals last week at New York's Apollo Theater. "I knew she'd be mad."
After the Detroit premiere, Slutsky and the Funk Brothers flew to his hometown, Philadelphia, for a premiere, then on to Los Angeles today for more promotional events. The film has won top honors at three film festivals: Kansas City, Austin and Denver.
With the film hitting theaters nationally on Friday, next on tap for the Funk Brothers will be a concert tour to support the film. The Funks, who didn't believe for years that Slutsky could pull it off, but humored him, now can enjoy their time in the sun. As Jack Ashford says: "Allan is our Moses, he led the Funk Brothers out of the desert."
You can reach Susan Whitall at (313) 222-2156 or swhitall@detnews.com.
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Standing in the Shadows of Motown: The movie: Trailers, soundtrack, bios, news
