James Jamerson, the pioneering Motown bassist who died of pneumonia in Los Angeles on August 2nd at the age of forty-five, was not famous like Sting of the Police, or John Entwistle of the Who. But Jamerson was one of the greatest and most influential musicians of our time, and it's safe to say that his sound and soul will always be with us, because the great Motown records of the Sixties will be listened to and appreciated for as long as there is a vibrant American musical culture.
Jamerson's bass playing almost defined the Motown sound. He was with the company from 1959 until 1973, and during the peak years of Motown's incredible golden era, from 1963 to 1966, he played on virtually every Motown, Tamla, Gordy, Soul and VIP release. On these records - backing the Supremes, Steve Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas, the Miracles, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye and many others - Jamerson created a sound, a feel and an impact that make him one of the three or four most important innovators in the last twenty years of American music.
Born January 29th, 1938, in Charleston, South Carolina, Jamerson moved to Detroit around 1953 and took up the bass, an upright model at first, in high school soon thereafter. He declined a scholarship to Wayne State University - he had a wife to support who was expecting the first of his four children - and instead plugged away playing his upright in local clubs and for small studio sessions. Berry Gordy heard him and in 1959 brought him into the Motown house band, which also featured the great drummer Benny Benjamin. A man of catholic capabilities (he played with everyone from jazz reed player Yusef Latef to bluesman John Lee Hooker), Jamerson, who switched from upright to an electric Fender Precision bass to go on tour with Jackie Wilson in 1961, literally invented the way the bottom end sounds on Motown records.
Due to the staggering amount of material the company released, it would have been physically impossible for one person to have played on every single session between 1959 and 1973; other bassists who worked for Motown included Bob Babbitt in Detroit, and Carol Kaye and Wilton Felder on the West Coast. But what these great bass players all did was follow Jamerson's lead.
It's hard for me to think of words to adequately describe his beautiful sound and the deftness and sensitivity of his playing. Fortunately most people have heard "Reach Out I'll Be There" and "Dancing in the Street" to cite only two of Jamerson's classic performances. But Jamerson also had a profound influence on the state of the recording art. During the Fifties, electric basses were not considered legitimate instruments by most producers and studio players; the most common approach was to record an acoustic bass to anchor the bottom of the sound, then have someone, usually a guitarist, add electric bass-string lines for percussive and melodic supplementation. When Jamerson came along, he totally blew away such prejudices - and by making the bottom jump and pop the way he did, he completely changed the way people heard and played R&B and rock & roll. He was the first electric bass player that you might call a virtuoso.
In the early Seventies, Motown moved its headquarters from Detroit to Los Angeles, branching out into film and TV production. Jamerson moved a while later, but by then he was a restless and dissatisfied man. Although his great bass lines were being recycled and restated on hundreds of records year after year, he had never received the recognition he deserved. He was also plagued by alcoholism, which finally, according to his widow, Annie Jamerson, ended his career with Motown. "When people clamor after you, and then forget you when you become ill...That really hurt him," said Mrs. Jamerson recently.
Motown was only changing with the times, and to this day it still puts out great records. But since the company's move west, there has been no such thing as an identifiable Motown sound - the one-time "Sound of Young America." As Jamerson told Guitar Player magazine in 1979, "They lost the sound, man. They moved to L.A. looking for something different, and they didn't find it. And all along, everybody else was searching for the same sound they had."
Now, that sound and the man who played such a large part in creating it, are gone.
-Marshall Crenshaw
This article originally appeared in Rolling Stone
September 29, 1983