Born on January 29, 1936, James Lee Jamerson was raised on the sounds of gospel, jazz, and blues radio stations. While attending Northwestern High School, he picked up an acoustic bass in the school’s music room and discovered his “voice.” He quickly sharpened his skills at jam sessions with Detroit’s top jazz musicians and came under the influence of bass heroes like Paul Chambers and Ray Brown. James got club work in jazz, blues, and R&B; nightspots, and before long he was recording for Detroit’s labels, including Motown—where he met his future soulmates, the Funk Brothers, in 1959.

In ’61, at the urging of friend and fellow bassist Horace “Chili” Ruth, Jamerson strapped on a Fender Precision. The planets must have been aligned over Detroit that day, as Jamerson quickly took to an instrument he didn’t particularly care for at first. Gradually he began applying melodic fills, string-raked walking lines, chromatic passing tones, dizzying syncopations, and other innovations that forged the template for modern electric bass playing. Collectively, the Funk Brothers played on more number one hits than the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Elvis combined.

Unfortunately, as with groundbreaking bassist Jaco Pastorius, James Jamerson’s tale has a sad ending. When Motown moved to Los Angeles in 1972, Jamerson followed, but he never quite fit in without his Funk Brothers surrounding him. Beset with personal problems and plagued by alcoholism, his performance suffered and work slowed. He was said to be broke and bitter about his lack of recognition at the time of his death from a combination of cirrhosis of the liver, heart failure, and pneumonia. Had he survived just a few more years, he would have heard the accolades he was due.

We asked seven top low-enders with links to the Motown master to dissect the Jamerson style.

Chuck Rainey

Michael Henderson

Phil Chen

Ralphe Armstrong

J.V. Collier

Bob Babbitt

James Jamerson, Jr.

Chuck Rainey: Two ingredients are key to James Jamerson’s style. One, he usually played off a root-5th-octave pattern; second, most of the Motown grooves had a hidden baion type of feel. James built many of his lines from the root-5th-octave shape, and then he’d add other scale tones, as well as non-scale chromatic passing tones, to create motion and melodic lines. That was his major influence on my style. A classic example is the kind of stuff he played on songs like “Bernadette” by the Four Tops (see Ex. 1).

Coming from his upright background, James plucked mainly with one finger, using all upstrokes. His heavy touch, high P-Bass action, and “real man” attitude resulted in strong, singing notes. I remember showing him my back-and-forth index-finger plucking technique, and he laughed and said, “that’s sissy stuff right there.”

Chuck Rainey is a studio legend who has also recorded three solo CDs.

Michael Henderson: James Jamerson’s whole concept was melodic syncopated soul. Here’s good example of his syncopated sense: Say he had to play a “Midnight Hour”-style bass line (see Ex. 2a). He would play it more like this (see Ex. 2b).

Live, he’d use his Ampeg B-15 or blue Kustom 200 with two 15s, and he would turn the amp almost all the way up, so he could control the volume and dynamics from his P-Bass and with his fingers. His strings were dead flatwounds, and his action was so high, you had to get your friend to help you play Bb!

Veteran bassist/vocalist Michael Henderson is back on the road performing music from his solo albums and working with the Miles Davis alum band, Children On The Corner, with Michael Wolfe, Badal Roy, Sonny Fortune, and Ndugu Chancler.

An Essential Dozen James Jamerson Motown Tracks

“Bernadette” (the Four Tops)

“I Was Made to Love Her” (Stevie Wonder)

“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (Gladys Knight)

“What’s Going On” (Marvin Gaye)

“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” (Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell)

“(I’m a) Roadrunner” (Junior Walker)

“Home Cookin’” (Junior Walker)

“For Once in My Life” (Stevie Wonder)

“My Guy” (Mary Wells)

“You Keep Me Hanging On” (the Supremes)

“Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day” (Stevie Wonder)

“Mutiny” (Junior Walker)

Phil Chen: Jamerson borrowed his technique from his upright skills, which gave him hand strength. His stock sunburst ’62 P-Bass, the “Funk Machine,” had high action and foam under the bridge cover. He used La Bella flatwounds, gauges .052–.110, that he rarely changed. You can still buy the same-gauge set today; they have blue silk windings on the ends. In Hitsville’s Studio A he recorded direct by plugging into one of five inputs in the wall. Each had a volume control, and he would boost the signal so the VU meter was slightly in the red, giving him a bit of warm overdrive from the tube console. His bass then went through a Fairchild limiter and a Pultec EQ, and he’d hear it through a Bozak monitor in the studio. In later sessions he would occasionally use his miked Ampeg B-15.

Veteran L.A. bassist and Jamaica native Phil Chen is best known for his work with Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck, and John Fogerty. He worked extensively behind the scenes on the 2003 documentary film of the Funk Brothers, Standing in the Shadows of Motown.

Ralphe Armstrong: James Jamerson was the consummate blend of intellectual, trained musician and street-smart player. A key to his sound was his use of an upright technique that dates back to Domenico Dragonetti and was used by Charles Mingus and Ray Brown: Instead of laying his fingers across the string, which is a more legato approach, he would anchor his left thumb behind the neck and curve his fingers so only the tips were touching the target notes. This violin-like technique, still common with European double bassists, enables you to get a pure note. He stayed fairly faithful to upright fingering by using his 3rd finger on top of his 4th to help hold down a note, or sometimes just squeezing the two together. James plucked with his index finger—known as “the Hook”—while sometimes adding his middle finger if needed, and he anchored his fingers on the metal pickup cover and left his thumb hanging freely. He played mostly in first position and used a lot of open strings to help him facilitate shifts in flat keys, which became a trademark part of his sound. [Anthony Jackson has noted that Jamerson usually followed these out-of-key open-string notes immediately with a fretted, flatted note on the string below in a single rake motion.] He also loved to drop down from the root to the 3rd (see Ex. 3), which you can hear on many songs, including the Gladys Knight version of “Grapevine.”

Veteran Detroit doubler Ralphe Armstrong has recorded with everyone from Curtis Mayfield and the Temptations to the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Geri Allen.

J.V. Collier: A big part of Jamerson’s style was his rhythmic ability—the way he would bounce through the changes and the motion he put into songs. In the early years he pretty much played the root and 5th, like everyone else. But then he started to add the 3rd, the 7th, and other chord and non-chord tones, which enabled him to play through the changes, and that sent him over the top. He did what I call the bounce and pivot. He’d use the 5th in the root-5th-octave shape as a pivot and bounce around from it, while constantly varying the notes and rhythms (see Ex. 4). From there, it seemed like Jamerson’s style expanded every year until his parts began to sound like bass solos, but totally in the pocket and supportive of the song.

Detroit native J.V. Collier has been in Bruce Hornsby’s band since 1993 and can be heard on Hornsby’s RCA latest, Big Swing Face. He has also worked with Gladys Knight and Gerald Albright.

Ten Non-Motown Hits Featuring James Jamerson

“(You’re Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” (Jackie Wilson)

“Boogie Fever” (the Sylvers)

“Show and Tell” (Al Wilson)

“Rock the Boat” (the Hues Corporation)

“You Don’t Have to Be a Star” (Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr.)

“Heaven Must Have Sent You” (Bonnie Pointer)

“Theme from S.W.A.T.” (Rhythm Heritage)

“Boom, Boom, Boom” (John Lee Hooker)

“(Just Like) Romeo and Juliet” (the Reflections)

“Hungry for Love” (the San Remo Golden Strings)

Bob Babbitt: I learned three important lessons from James Jamerson. First, feel is the most important thing. Listen to what James plays on Smokey Robinson’s “My Girl”—it’s only three notes, but he plays them with such feel that it’s a major hook. Stevie Wonder’s “I Was Made to Love Her” has a lot of notes, but the feel is just as prominent. Second is freedom of expression; James went a step beyond what bassists normally do. At first he took chances and let himself go, and then it just became natural for him, and in the process he changed the course of bass playing. Third, he told me to always make your bass sing like a voice.

A lot of Jamerson’s syncopation came from his magical relationship with Benny Benjamin; they’d play off each other and do call-and-answer stuff. I remember him telling me that you don’t have to lock with the kick drum—you can go against it. He’d hit the one with Benny and then wait until Benny played his next kick beat, and then James would answer that with a figure. Or he’d play counter to the drums, like on Martha & the Vandellas’ “Heat Wave”: Everyone is playing the dotted-quarter-to-an-eighth-note, Charleston-type of feel, and he plays a walking line against it. Jamerson gave his total being to a track, and that’s why he’s the master.

A session legend in Detroit, Philadelphia, New York, and currently Nashville, Bob Babbitt hopes that he and the rest of the Funk Brothers continue performing and touring.

James Jamerson Jr.: A lot of my dad’s style came from his personality, and he had a different personality and approach for each Motown artist. He had the ballad style with Smokey Robinson; with Marvin Gaye he was more melodic; with Stevie Wonder he was able to stretch more; with the Temptations it was a low, resonant kind of sound—but all of it was still his style.

I tried my dad’s index-finger-only technique and it didn’t work for me, but he had it down. He played a lot of ghost-notes, but back then the term didn’t mean dead notes—it referred to notes that would hang in the air after the chord moved to the next change. Usually, it would be an open E or A phrased a certain way in a flat key. And because it was on the bottom, it would really throw people and trick the ear, because you couldn’t distinguish what had just happened.

One thing I’m grateful for, both personally and for my dad, was a recording date I did in L.A. for Robert Goulet. It was my first major session, and I was filling in for my dad, who was ill. Afterward, the arranger, Bruce Miller, sent my father a letter saying what a good job I had done and how I had lived up to my name. I came home and saw my dad reading the letter and crying. He gave me a big hug and said, “You’ve done your daddy justice.” It made him so proud that someone was carrying on his legacy, and that it was one of his own.

James Jamerson Jr. has recorded with everyone from the Crusaders and B.B. King to Bob Dylan and Teena Marie. He is currently working on his first solo CD.