Funk Brothers - The Best of the Funk Brothers: 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection
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Artist: Funk BrothersEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2004-02-03
Music Label: Motown
Soundtracks:
- The Way You Do the Things You Do
- Come See About Me
- All for You
- To Many Fish in the Sea
- How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)
- I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)
- Soul Stomp
- 6 by 6
- Runaway Child, Running Wild
- The Stingray
- What's Going On (Instrumental)
- Papa Was a Rolling Stone (Instrumental)
Music reviews of The Best of the Funk Brothers: 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection
Music Review: As an Overview, Yes; As a Definitive Collection, No
Rating: 4 Stars
They were the no-questions-asked best R and B studio aggregation in the United States this side of Booker T. and the MGs at Stax in the 1960s and early 1970s, and it took until a couple of books (especially Nelson George's "Where Did Our Love Go: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound" and Alan Slutsky's "Standing in the Shadows of Motown") and a warm, unforgettable television special (based on the Slutsky book and with the surviving members of the aggregation) to get them their absolute, no-questions-asked due, even if the critical core of the aggregation (keyboard ace/bandleader Earl Van Dyke, bassist extraordinaire James Jamerson, drummers Benny Benjamin, Uriel Jones, and Pistol Allen, and guitarist Robert White) are no longer with us to bask in it.
Now, if only the Funk Brothers could get their due on CD, it would be---well, about as close to complete a repayment, for the magnificent work they performed in making the Motown sound, as could be asked. This disc is just an overview for the uninitiated, or for those poor souls who still persist in wondering what the hell was the big deal? In some ways, it's a kind of reminder as to both how highly and how little Motown mastermind Berry Gordy, Jr. thought of his house musicians---on the one hand, he kept them on generous salaries (at least in the context of their time and art, considering the Funk Brothers were notorious moonlighters whose work as moonlighters only began with the Capitols' "Cool Jerk" and Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher"); on the other hand, when they itched to record on their own (the musicians themselves came out of the jazz and blues worlds), the most Gordy would allow---with a few notable exceptions, some collected here---was to let them play the charts for the Motown hits ("Earl Van Dyke and the Soul Brothers Play That Motown Sound," the title of the first such album, was emblematic of the dilemna; "Soul Brothers" came because Gordy apparently feared "funk" would offend), with Earl Van Dyke featured on electric organ.
We can only imagine what might have been if Gordy had let his house musicians really cut loose in their own right in addition to their incandescent studio work. Some of the Earl Van Dyke and the Soul Brothers sides are remarkable music in their own right; the absolute best of those sides, "All for You," gives a tantalising taste of what might have been if Motown had been comfortable allowing pure bluesmen to join the label. The rollicking rhythm and backbeat splat could have been a Temptations session, but the Funks' exuberance on this striking blues shuffle---just listen to the way bassist Jamerson and drummer Benjamin jam, the way Van Dyke betrays an admiration for bluesy jazz titan Jimmy Smith, the way White strikes his ringing guitar triads---is a joy to hear. You wonder why any number of blues bands slogging the bars looking for ways out of the usual shuffle shucking haven't caught hold of this one; you ought to lament, too, that its near equal, "Hot 'n' Tot," isn't on this set. "Soul Stomp," the closest the Funk Brothers got to a hit single in their own right, is here, though, and it has the rip-roaring party ambience of the best of Junior Walker's early sides, enough so that you wonder why Walker didn't sneak in and blow a chorus here and there, not that Van Dyke's exuberant organ is a bad substitution.
The sides on which Van Dyke was pressed into laying organ solos over the Funks' reiteration of their Motown hit backings aren't terrible by any means, even if there's something a little too much drawn from the old roller skating rinks in these versions of "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" and "Come See About Me." But the treats here that are equal to the Funks' non-Motown-hit sides are the backing tracks they set down for two of Motown's most revelatory hits, Marvin Gaye's groundbreaking "What's Going On" and the Temptations' harrowing masterwork "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone." What music! You almost---underline that, folks---don't miss Gaye's pleading, pulpit-deep vocal or the Temptations' half-noirish, half-primal wall of grief when you hear the musicians creating the beds over which those artists worked. "What's Going On" without Gaye is about the closest Motown ever got to what would be called, soon enough, smooth jazz, and it's a hell of a lot deeper than most of what goes by that label; "Rollin' Stone" is the kind of extended cinematic funk the most celebrated of the hard funk practitioners only wish they had come up with.
You could make a parlour game out of what's missing here; if you've ever heard the tracks for the Spinners' hit "It's a Shame," the Supremes' "The Happening" (on which the only known Funk Sister, flautist Dayna Hartwick, keeps the song's melody intact since she echoed Diana Ross's original lead vocal on the hit single), or the Four Tops's "Standing in the Shadows of Love," you get the idea. (Wouldn't it be great, too, to hear nothing but the Funk Brothers on such transitional works as the Temptations' "Cloud Nine"---you get only a small taste of it with "Runaway Child, Running Wild"---or "Masterpiece"; or, the Four Tops's "Still Water"?) Somewhere there's a definitive Funk Brothers anthology to be compiled and loved, even by people who wouldn't ordinarily sit listening to backing tracks. Because these were no ordinary backing tracks, and these were no ordinary musicians. Mitch Miller once said, derisively, that if you took away the microphone most pop singers would be slicing salami in delicatessens. One listen to the Funk Brothers on their own and you could almost make the case that a lot of Motown's hitmakers would have been slicing salami in delicatessens if not for what Van Dyke, Jamerson, Benjamin, and company gave them.
As an introduction (or re-introduction, if you will), this CD will do nicely enough. But these were the men who really made the Motown Sound. It's great that they've gotten their way overdue props as the musical titans they were, but it would be even better to have an anthology equal to that overdue justice. Let's hope it comes our way soon.
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