The Funk Brothers
At Massey Hall
in Toronto on Tuesday
For years, the Funk Brothers were the greatest unknown band in the world.
Working as the Motown studio's house band for most of the sixties, the group played on dozens of chart-topping hits by Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells, the Supremes, the Temptations and the Four Tops. Yet, they were utterly anonymous outside the walls of that Detroit hit machine, unknown to any but a handful of cognoscenti until last year, when the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown (which told the story of the Funk Brothers and of legendary bassist, James Jamerson) was released to wide acclaim.
Thus, on Tuesday at Massey Hall, the Funk Brothers played their first gig in Toronto, some 39 years after My Guy and Baby Love topped the charts. Only now, the six singers -- who in this case included Joan Osborne, Maxi Priest and Darlene Love -- were secondary; the band were the true stars of the show.
Assembled by Allan (Dr. Licks) Slutsky, the Philadelphia-based guitarist and author whose Jamerson biography was the basis for the film, the Funk Brothers tour features all six surviving members of the group, along with a handful of ringers (many culled from Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's house band at Philly International Records). It made for a sizable ensemble -- 14 players in all, including two drummers and three guitarists -- and most of the musicians sat as they performed, reading from arrangements stretched on music stands in front of them.
Stodgy as it might have looked, the sound and feel of the music was incredible. Although nearly all the material came from the Motown catalogue (the sole exception was Cool Jerk, which the Funk Brothers played on while moonlighting for another Detroit label, Karen Records), none of the singers were Motown artists, and had the illuminating effect of refocusing the audience's attention from the foreground to the background.
This wasn't about nostalgia, in the way most oldies shows are. As anyone who has caught the old Motown stars on the revival circuit knows, what we hear isn't the old hits brought to life, but the distance from then to now as measured in the wear on a singer's voice or the inadequacies of the backing band. Simply put, the music never sounds exactly right, even though we're listening to the stars who made those records.
By contrast, hearing Maxi Priest sing Ma Cherie Amour at Massey Hall felt genuine in ways it had no business being. True, Priest's warm, lithe tenor offered a reasonable simulacrum for Stevie Wonder's voice, but that was only the smallest part of the illusion. No, what really made the performance work was that the arrangement was note-perfect, and the band was totally in the pocket. The vocals were just icing on the cake.
Perhaps the greatest example of how strong that Funk Brothers sound was came when singer John Ingram pulled a couple of young fellows out of the audience and had them join him in a rendition of the Temptations' My Guy. Even though one of the young Torontonians was actually pretty good, the point was it almost didn't matter -- the arrangement and playing were so sure and familiar as to be virtually indestructible. That's not to say the singing was entirely inconsequential. When Joan Osborne took on the Jimmy Ruffin hit What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, she brought an intensity that ignited the song, giving the audience something that went well beyond mere memory.
For a moment, it was possible to feel some of the magic that the Funk Brothers created on a daily basis.