The Funk Brothers

Motown’s most valuable players toiled in anonymity during the 1960s—outside the Motor City, anyway. Now, the Funk Brothers are revered worldwide as the devastating in-the-pocket groove makers powering The Sound of Young America. Keyboardist/bandleader Earl Van Dyke was their leader, inheriting the chair from Joe Hunter, who led the band from 1959-1964. Van Dyke, affectionately known as “The Chunk of Funk,” guitarists Robert White, Eddie Willis and Joe Messina, drummer William “Benny” Benjamin, a.k.a. “Papa Zita” (a 2003 inductee of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame) and bassist James Jamerson (a year 2000 inductee of the Hall) formed the nucleus of the sensational sessioneers populating Studio A at Hitsville U.S.A.

            The core band was joined by drummers Uriel Jones, Richard “Pistol” Allen and Andrew Smith, pianist Johnny Griffith, guitarist Larry Veeder, bassists Tony Newton and Bob Babbitt, and percussionists Eddie “Bongo” Brown, Jack Ashford and Jack Brokenshaw. Then there were the many horn players, including Mike Terry, Johnny Trudell, Paul Riser (who also arranged strings) and Thomas “Beans” Bowles, who led the first Motortown Revue and schooled new acts in Motown's Artist Development division.

            These masterful Detroit musicians—steeped as deeply in modern jazz as they were in bedrock R&B—laid down the scintillating rhythms driving countless smashes by the Temptations, the Miracles, the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, and the rest of Motown’s gilt-edged '60s stable. Jamerson’s elastic, ahead-of-their-time bass lines synched impeccably with Benjamin’s equally ingenious timekeeping to move rhythmic mountains. In the late '60s, Norman Whitfield's studio innovations brought players like Dennis Coffey and Melvin “Wah Wah Watson” Ragin to the fore. Benjamin’s 1969 death dealt the band a devastating blow, but it was ultimately Motown’s shift to L.A. in the '70s that ended their reign as house band extraordinaire.

            Yet knowing fans kept their name alive and in 2002 the documentary film Standing in the Shadows of Motown finally told their story. The acclaimed film won numerous awards, including National Society of Film Critics Award and New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Non-Fiction Film. The soundtrack album landed the Funks two Grammy® Awards at the 2003 ceremony; later that year they were honored at the White House. In 2004 the group was given a Grammy® Lifetime Achievement Award.

            Their late-in-life success only proved Berry Gordy’s timeless slogan: “It’s what’s in the grooves that count.”