No musical education can be complete without Standing in the Shadows of Motown.

On the one hand there is the biography of James Jamerson, the bassplaying genius. On the other there is the film I saw last night about the Funk Brothers � the house band at the Detroit studios of Tamla Motown. I just have to get a DVD of this work.

It helps explain why the bar musicians in Detroit are so interesting even today.

When the band play in the Detroit hall recreating some of the classics, they generally use two drummers simultaneously. Quite rare but I think there are some Grateful Dead live tracks where it happens � also on George Harrison�s Concert for Bangladesh. I once saw the Charlie Watts Big Band in Bracknell with three drummers (including CW). I decided that it was a piece of conceptual art.

For biographies see: http://www.standingintheshadowsofmotown.com/funksbio.htm

Note Eddie Willis� Gibson Firebird which he also uses in the film.

I have a half completed article which tries to trace from Milt Jackson to Derek May in Detroit. There is a really good clip of Joe Messina playing a fast Parker derived blues on a Strat looking like Buddy Holly. There is a James Jamerson jazz quartet recording from the 60s - to go with the jazz trio that comes with the CDs in the biography.

I have heard the vocal performances in the film criticised for not being as strong as the originals. This misses the point. The aim is to render the songs so that people can appreciate the quality of the accompaniment and so it helps if the vocals are slightly under done. It would look silly if they were carbon copies of the originals and pointless to have them too dominant. Actually the exception which proves the rule is Chaka Kahn�s version of Whats Going On where her scat singing is harder than the original. I hadn�t realised that this was the first Motown album where the musicians were actually credited.

The drama of some of the songs is intensified by live performance � �What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?� rockets in stature to a become major existential statement. The strings are further back and but the harmonic contour is more overt, the beat is heavier and the song is longer. I think the maturity of the performers helps too. Cloud Nine gets angrier, Shotgun more funky, Heatwave more ecstatic. The gap between Detroit and Muscles Shoals contracts. But at the same time you hear more Chicago in the drum parts. The baritone solos are longer.

On many songs there are three guitarists with carefully worked out (not arranged) inter-locking parts. Someone is doing back-beat chops, someone is doing a line and the third is doing some onbeat colour. Each part is reasonable straightforward but like Duke Ellington when you put the parts together it moves into a different universe. It�s the same with the way the Hammond, the piano and the vibes gel . Head arrangements elevated to an artform.

And as for the lives they led.