Motown's Funk Brothers Dancing in the Street How bittersweet it is to be a Motown musician. In the past year, the anonymous studio pros who played on the great Motown hits of the 1960s, have emerged from retirement to bask in some belated acclaim. While Motown stars like Stevie Wonder (news) and Diana Ross (news) have become pop culture icons, the jazz and blues masters who provided the funky licks on such classics as "My Girl" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" faded into obscurity when the fabled Detroit label moved to Los Angeles in 1972. But the Funk Brothers -- as the core 13 musicians were known -- finally saw their story reach the big screen in "Standing in the Shadows of Motown," an acclaimed documentary that was 16 years in the making. They won two Grammy Awards earlier this year for the soundtrack album, and just completed a brief North American tour to promote the film's April 22 release on home video. The 2-disc DVD includes deleted scenes, new footage, a commentary track, biographies and jam sessions. Just six Funk Brothers are alive now, and watching the DVD is hard for the survivors, whose average age is about 70. "The Funk Brothers, for grown men, we do a lot of crying," said Jack Ashford, the group's 68-year-old percussionist. "Some things that come up are so sad to us we can't hold it back. That's because we were so tight. It's like family members missing. It really is." But the Funk Brothers are keeping the legacy alive now that their careers are taking off. They are getting offers for session work, although nothing has been confirmed yet. They are also planning to tour Australia and Europe. STUDIO-BOUND "The only real fun we have is when we get together and get away from all them people, the kids and the grandkids," joked Ashford, who had settled into retirement in Memphis. More than 40 years after playing their first notes at Motown, Ashford and pianist Joe Hunter also hope to go into the studio to record new material with their comrades. "I have some things, Jack has some things, (drummers) Uriel Jones has some ideas, and 'Pistol' had a whole lot of ideas," said Hunter, 75, Motown's original bandleader. Richard "Pistol" Allen was one of two Funk Brothers to die after the film was completed in 2000, and he was loaded on morphine during the shoot to ease his pain. He finally succumbed to lung cancer in June 2002, aged 69. Five months later, keyboardist Johnny Griffith, 66, suffered a fatal heart attack hours before the film's Detroit premiere. They were preceded by drummer Benny Benjamin (1969) and bassist James Jamerson (1983), both Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees; percussionist Eddie Brown (1984); pianist Earl Van Dyke (1992); and guitarist Robert White (1994). Some of the survivors are not in the best of health either. Jones and guitarist Eddie Willis have undergone heart bypass surgery. Ashford and Hunter suffer from diabetes. Bassist Bob Babbitt is nursing an injured knee. The combo is rounded out by Joe Messina, who put down his guitar for almost 30 years after Motown left Detroit. For all, music is the best medicine. "It's making them younger," said Allan Slutsky, one of the producers of the film, whose title takes its name from his award-winning Jamerson biography. "You see their steps a little more spritely. There's a reason to get up every day, a little bit of excitement in their lives. It's nice in the November and December of their years to get this kind of acclaim." THE MOTOWN BLUES But the joy is mixed with a little anger that Motown did not treat them fairly. The Funk Brothers cranked out hits from the "snakepit," a cramped suburban basement, as consistently as the town's Big Three churned out autos. As was common practice industrywide, the Funk Brothers' names were not listed on Motown records. Ashford also said they were underpaid. "All we had was each other, in this jungle," he said. "We stuck together. If I needed a couple of dollars, I could get that from the Funk Brothers. I wouldn't go to the company. The one incident where one of the Funk Brothers went to the company to get something, they put him through living hell." Rubbish, say Motown songwriters Brian and Eddie Holland, two-thirds of the famed Holland-Dozier-Holland trio, who are no friends of the Motown empire either. "They made more money than any musicians I knew," said Brian Holland. "And they were working constantly. Then they'd get bonuses and stuff." "They were making $60,000-$70,000 in a time where a good lawyer would be making $25,000," added Eddie Holland. In the movie, the Funk Brothers re-created Motown's hits with singers Joan Osborne (news), Bootsy Collins, Meshell Ndegeocello, Ben Harper (news), Chaka Khan (news) (in a Grammy-winning version of "What's Going On"), Gerald Levert (news), and Montell Jordan (news). The filmmakers had hoped to bring aboard Motown alumni like Wonder and Ross, but were either rejected or ignored. Ashford said he wasn't surprised. "That's their prerogative, and I don't have anything against them. I'm getting tunnel vision. If it's not a Funk Brother, I don't see them. And I have that prerogative." Source: Yahoo! News

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