James Jamerson Archives - Page 3

As bass players, nearly every one of us knows the magnitude of James Jamerson’s legacy. His impeccable groove and round tone was the key to most of the hits from the ‘60s including Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going on?,” “My Girl” by the Temptations, and “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” by Gladys Knight and the Pips. All of those songs...

No Isolated Bass Week would be complete without one of the stunning bass lines by the one and only James Jamerson. Today we’re in for a treat with the beautiful bass line behind the Jackson 5 tune, “Darling Dear” from Third Album, released in 1970. I love being able to hear the bass with the vocals to hear how Jamerson...

This one should make a lot of readers happy. Every year, plenty of people say the great James Jamerson should be #1, and we can never argue with that. In 2013, No Treble readers made it so, checking out the isolated bass videos we’ve shared along the way. What likely tipped the scales this year was the response to Jack...

We’re closing out Isolated Bass Week III with the master, James Jamerson. This is the audio track for Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t That Peculiar”, with the bass and drums isolated from the original Motown master tape. (And some other instruments leaking through). I believe Uriel Jones is the drummer on the track. But this is mostly about the bass.

Vulfpeck’s Jack Stratton sent us this cool video he made saying, “[James] Jamerson belongs with Bach, Debussy and Mozart, and that includes graphical scores on Youtube.” We couldn’t agree more. We dig this visual representation of one of Jamerson’s amazing bass lines – a bass line that is best described on the Wikipedia article about the original: Wonder’s version of...

Yesterday was a sad day in the world of bass and music in general. On August 2, 1983, James Jamerson – the man responsible for so much of the Motown sound for many years – passed away at the age of 47. As bassists gather today in Detroit to honor the late bassist, another bassist is paying tribute with his...

The bassists in Detroit have a great tradition of getting together every year in front of the Motown Museum for a photo shoot to get the most bass players together in a single picture. As if that’s not cool enough, the event has been expanded with the introduction of Detroit Bass Day, a day-long celebration honoring the legendary Motown bassist...

Just over ten years ago, the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown made its debut at the Apollo Theater in New York. The film’s detailed look into the musicians behind all of Motown’s hits reignited the passion for the era’s music and led to the Funk Brothers receiving Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Recording Academy. As just about any...

If there’s one constant on our annual reader favorites’ list, that would be the great James Jamerson. If there’s one constant in our most liked videos we feature, it would be the ones featuring the isolated bass lines from legendary tunes. Combine those two things, and you have a person who makes the list with very entries over the course...

This wouldn’t be much of an “isolated bass week” without including the legend, James Jamerson. So here’s a (mostly) isolated bass track from the 1967 Four Tops hit, “Bernadette”. There’s some disagreement about whether this is the bass on the actually released single, or if it is an out-take from the Motown vault. Doesn’t matter to us… it is still...

The legend continues. Last week, we reported on the story that PBS’s History Detectives were investigating an amp believed to be owned by Motown legend James Jamerson, in an attempt to determine its authenticity. Well, the folks behind the PBS show deemed the amp as legit (leaving room at the end that the evidence wasn’t conclusive). Jamerson’s son, James Jamerson,...

In 2009, Los Angeles bassist Steve Fishman discovered a vintage Ampeg amp that may just be the find of the century. Stenciled on the back of the amp was the name of the Motown bass legend, James Jamerson. Fishman, who has recorded with Paul McCartney, decided to try to get this story investigated, to see if this amp is indeed...