The Funk Brothers
My Girl is a test for bass players to me. Many bass players sound good when they can lock on to the drummer but don't groove well on there own. I got to play My Girl with Armando Cepeda of Ike Turner's band.The first time we played it I almost fell off my stool.I couldn't believe how hard he grooved the bass intro. Heat Wave had tambourine on the studio track so, Richard "Pistol" Allen played the shuffle on the snare. You can seein the live video the drummer plays time on the hat.
For Funk Brothers PDF Drum Chart of My Girl click here.
Drummers: * William "Benny" Benjamin (1959–1969) * Richard "Pistol" Allen (1959–1972) * George McGregor (1959–1962) * Clifford Mack (1959–1962) * Marvin Gaye (1959–1962) * Uriel Jones (1963–1972) * Frederick Waites (1963–1967) * Andrew Smith (1968–1972) The Funk Brothers was the nickname given to a group of Detroit, Michigan, session musicians who performed on the backing tracks to most Motown Records recordings from 1959 until 1972, when the company moved to Los Angeles. They played on many major Motown hits such as "My Girl", "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", "Baby Love", "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours", "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone", "The Tears of a Clown", and "(Love is Like a) Heat Wave". The role of the Funk Brothers is described in Paul Justman's 2002 documentary film Standing in the Shadows of Motown, based on Allan Slutsky's book of the same name. The opening titles of the film proclaim the Funk Brothers as "having played on more number-one records than The Beatles, Elvis, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys combined." Early members included bandleader Joe Hunter and Earl Van Dyke (piano); James Jamerson (bass guitar); Benny "Papa Zita" Benjamin and Richard "Pistol" Allen (drums); Robert White, Eddie Willis, and Joe Messina (guitar); Jack Ashford (tambourine, percussion, vibes, marimba); Jack Brokensha (vibes, marimba); and Eddie "Bongo" Brown (percussion). Hunter left in 1964, replaced on keyboards by Johnny Griffith and as bandleader by Van Dyke. Around the same time Uriel Jones joined the band as a third drummer. In 1967, guitarists Dennis Coffey and Melvin "Wah-Wah Watson" Ragin, who introduced the wah-wah pedal sound that defined Motown's psychedelic soul records, joined the band. Benny Benjamin died the next year, and Bob Babbitt began to replace James Jamerson on many recording dates. The Funk Brothers were a racially integrated band. Most members were of African descent; Messina, Brokensha, Babbitt, and Coffey were white. Until the release of the Standing in the Shadows of Motown documentary, the members of the band were not widely known to the public for their contributions to the Motown sound, despite having played the music in many Motown hits. Studio musicians were not credited on Motown releases until Marvin Gaye's What's Going On in 1971, although Motown released a handful of singles and LPs by Earl Van Dyke. The Funk Brothers shared top billing with Van Dyke on some of these recordings, although they were billed as "Earl Van Dyke & the Soul Brothers", since Motown CEO Berry Gordy, Jr. disliked the connotation of the word "funk". The band used a number of innovative techniques for performing the backing tracks for many Motown songs. For example, most Motown records feature two drummers instead of one, either playing together or overdubbing one another — Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" used three drummers. A number of songs utilized instrumentation and percussion unusual in soul music recording. The Temptations' "It's Growing" features Earl Van Dyke playing a toy piano for the song's introduction, snow chains are used as percussion on Martha & the Vandellas' "Nowhere to Run", and a custom oscillator was built to create the synthesizer sounds used to accent Diana Ross & the Supremes' "Reflections" A tire iron was used in the Martha & the Vandellas "Dancing in the Streets". The above article is from Wikipedia
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