Motown / Pgd
2004
The Best of the Funk Brothers
About This Album
While it is tempting to write for literally days about the contribution of the Funk Brothers to the Motown legacy, it would be redundant. Other than cold hard cash being paid to the remaining members and their families for their stellar performances and groove archetypes as a way of remedying an injustice, the verbal accolades have all been offered and received on countless web pages, in magazine articles that have been written from 1991 to the present (2004), and in the brilliant motion picture Standing in the Shadows of Motown. This tiny volume is the only title ever issued under the Funk Brothers moniker, and as such it is woefully inadequate as an accurate reflection of the massive amount of music these 13 men made between the years 1960 and 1972. In fact, a box set might have fallen short of the mark as well, but one disc barely scratches it. That said, the work of Earl Van Dyke, James Jamerson, Pistol Allen, Benny Benjamin, Robert White, Eddie Willis, Jack Ashford, Joe Messina, Johnny Griffith, Joe Hunter, Uriel Jones, Bob Babbit, and Eddie "Bongo" Brown is showcased gloriously here as having been an entire empire of groove unto itself. What these 12 cuts reveal -- all of them backing tracks, some with overlaid backing vocals -- is what the Motown singers had as a foundation for their ingenious singing.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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