Persons Of Influence

You can tell a lot about a musician by the folks he/she cites as influences. If a metal band mentions Led Zeppelin, you know they'll huff and pound, with all of the volume and none of the style, of Led Zep. (None of them ever grasp the many dimensions Jimmy Page and company bought to the genre.) If a sax player mentions Charlie Parker, chances are he's a second-rate wanna be. Unfortunately, the same is often true for guitar players who call Jimi Hendrix their idol. (Yes, Frank Marino and Robin Trower, I'm talking to you.)

But if a bass player mentions James Jamerson, he might be pretty good. Because when Jaco Pastorius, considered by many the gold standard of electric bassists, terms himself a second-rate James Jamerson clone, Jaco wasn't being falsely modest. Yes, Jamerson was THAT good.

You may never have heard of him — in fact, you almost certainly haven't — but you've heard him. Hundreds of times. Jamerson was the bassist on almost every great Motown record, a musician so gifted that Stevie Wonder said, "Jamerson's bass playing made a certain fabric of my life visual."

If you're thinking that a bass player — a bass player! — can make a blind man see, then you have to figure he was something rare and special. He was. In an era where most bassists just played the root notes of a chord, Jamerson played complicated lines that pushed, pulled, skipped and slammed, never content to play a chorus the same way twice. He could soar with a jazz band, furiously spitting out a barrage of 16th notes, then anchor an R&B tune with such a deep bottom that you could smell the funk.

How deep was his sense of rhythm? In the studio, as a practical joke on his fellow musicians, he'd play his bass part in the song's 4/4 time while beating a completely different rhythm in 3/4 time, or even a more complicated time signature, with his feet. Any musician who listened to Jamerson's feet, rather than his bass, was in trouble. Luckily, his bass groove was normally so deep the other musicians could fall into it.

Jamerson took his rhythm from the way people walked and talked, or from the way a tree swayed in the breeze. Everything he saw and heard suggested music to him.

Sometimes, though, the music it suggested to him didn't always meet with approval. Motown evolved into a two-part system, where certain musicians were considered studio musicians and were almost chained to the studio, while others were touring players and went out on the road with the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, and the other Motown acts. Jamerson, being a master in the studio, was confined there. It wasn't a problem for him, but it was a problem for the bassists in the touring bands who had to duplicate his complicated bass lines on the road. Several of them complained often, asking Jamerson to make his lines simpler. (He never did.)

Sadly, his lifestyle was the often heard story of self destruction, substance abuse and money squandered. That lifestyle took its toll, and he died long before his talents were recognized by most of the world.

His 1962 Fender Precision bass was named The Funk Machine by both James and a number of his fellow Motown hitmakers. But the funk wasn't in the bass. It was in James Jamerson.