Prologue

In the annals of modern popular music, there are many iconic instruments. From Dizzy Gillespies upturned-bell Martin Committee trumpet, to Paul McCartneys Hfner 500/1 violin bass, from the fiery remains of Keith Moons Premier drum kit, to the psychedelically infused Gibson SG of a young Cream-era Clapton, many musicians have become closely associated with the instruments they practice and perfect their art upon. Though perhaps not as widely knownand certainly less immediately recognizedas the aforementioned, few instruments carry with them the same gravitas as a certain Fender Precision, owned by the man who many consider to be the greatest and most influential electric bass player of all time.

James Lee Jamerson was born in late-January of 1939 near Charleston, South Carolina to Elizabeth and James Jamerson, Sr. His father toiled in the shipyards and docks of their native state, and his mother spent many long and thankless hours as a domestic worker. It was an era of great racial strife and little opportunity for colored people, to use the vernacular of the day. A great migration began at the onset of the United States involvement in WWII, as many southern blacks moved to the large industrial cities where the war effort was gearing up. Workers were needed for shifts that now ran around the clock, producing everything from B-24 bombers to K9 rations. Tens of thousands of factory jobs were there to be had, and many decided to head north in search of work and perhaps some vestige of the American Dream. But the war came and went, and unfortunately for the Jamerson family, that dream was derailed by divorce while they

were still in the Carolinas. After her split from James Sr., Elizabeth eventually went to Detroit in the early 50s, hoping to find a good job. She left young James with his grandmother until returning a year later to take him with her back to Michigan. Struggling as a single mother, she did her best to make a home for her displaced family in the bitterly cold winters and stifling summer heat of the Motor City.

Drawn to the music of the church as young boy back on Edisto Island, South Carolina, Jamerson was purported to have used a stick and a rubber band to create a simple bow instrument, one that he would place next to an anthill and pluck, just to get the little insects dancing. Once in Detroit, he quickly gravitated toward the school band and by his sophomore year was playing upright bass in Northwestern Highs ensemble. His natural rhythm, incredible ear and inventive bass lines soon began landing him regular gigs in various jazz and blues combos around the city. The owner of a fledgling record label, Northern Records, caught James performing at a club one night in 1958, and asked if he wanted to do some recording work. The unique sound and style of his playing was immediately apparent, and soon he was in high demand for his musical services at sessions for the citys various labels. It was at about that time that he acquired his first electric bass, a Fender Precision.

Leo Fender is credited with the invention of the electric bass guitar, obtaining patents and beginning production in 1951 with a simple, slab-body instrument that sported an electromagnetic pickup, and a neck like a baseball bat. Fender named it the Precision due to the inclusion of fret wire on the fingerboard, which solved the intonation problems often

associated with the upright, fretless instruments. It was less than a quarter of the size of the big bass fiddle, and one could plug it into even the smallest and least powerful of amplifiers and be heard far more prominently than the larger acoustic instrument ever had been. Its earliest proponents, jazzman Monk Montgomery among the first, found it a totally modern and far more convenient tool of the trade. It caused quite a stir in the musical community and often was the subject of heated debates on its validity as a real instrumentespecially among the jazz elite who considered the newfangled electrical oddity a curiosity at best. Record credits of the day often cited whether the session was played on bass, or on Fender bass. However, that was all soon to change.

Rock & Roll arrived on the scene in the early-50s, and thousands of young people across the country became enamored with the idea of playing this new music. Not surprisingly, very few were interested in carrying a dog-house (a pejorative term for the upright bass used at the time) around with them. Keeping pace with public demand over the following decade, Fender and his talented team of designers and builders implemented many modifications and improvements of the model. By 1961 the Precision was anything but club-like. The body was sculpted with contours on the back and front that made playing the instrument far more comfortable. The magnetic pickup was re-engineered to cancel the inherent noise that an electrical circuit carried. The neck was also reshaped to be slimmer and easier to play. And an ever-increasing number of finish options were now available, including the classic 3-color sunburst, a radial gradient of dark brown, red and yellow that blended evenly from the light color at the center of the body to the darkest

tone at its edge. Long aware of their existence but reluctant to make the switch, James finally tried one of the Fenders. And he saw that it was good.

A friend and fellow bass player, Horace Chili Ruth, gave James his first Fender Precisiona 1957 sunburst model that had been refinished in black, fitted with the stock gold anodized aluminum pick guard, and the chrome-plated bridge and pickup covers Leo Fender himself prescribed. James named this instrument Black Beauty. On many of his subsequent recordings from this point forward, he would double his bass part playing both upright and Fender bass on the tune. The new instrument added a certain presence that cut through the other instruments in the arrangements in a way that made the bass line a far more prominent and musical ingredient in the mix. When Black Beauty was stolen a few years later, Jamerson quickly decided to purchase a replacementa brand new 1962 Precision, with the 3-color sunburst finish and a rosewood fingerboard.

Where many of the other bass guitar players used a pick or perhaps their thumb to pluck the notes (Fender even shipped the basses with a tug bar installed so players could anchor their fingers to gain leverage for plucking with their thumb), Jamersons unique technique was to play all of his parts with only his right index finger; which he appropriately named The Hook. This single digit approach may be hard to believe when one listens to the complexity of some of his bass lines, but it was just one of the many things about James that set him apart from his peers.

He was picked to be a member of Jackie Wilsons band, traveling with the singer on tours throughout the country. At the same time, he had caught the ear of musical impresario Barry Gordy, whose Motown Records was soon to be nicknamed Hitsville U.S.A. By 1964, he was off the road and committed to his work as a session player, and the young Jamerson was a large part of the nonstop, chart-topping tunes that the various singers in Gordys stable produced. Though the unsung cast of studio musicians would be a faceless background track for decades, during the golden era of Motowns Snake Pit (as the musicians called the recording room of Studio A, where the vast majority of the sessions were done), they came to be known simply as The Funk Brothers.

Over the spectacularly successful decade of the 1960s, they performed for union wage or sometimes less, according to some accountson a staggering number of Top 10 hits by artists such as The Miracles, Martha & the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, The Contours, The Four Tops, and The Supremes, to name but a few. Over the years, and with varying tenure, drummers Richard "Pistol" Allen, Benny Benjamin, Uriel Jones; percussionists Eddie "Bongo" Brown and Jack Ashford; guitarists Joe Messina, Robert White and Eddie Chank Willis; and keyboardists Joe Hunter, Earl Van Dyke and Johnny Griffithalong with James and later bass player, Bob Babbittcomprised a house band of a caliber and output that may never again be approached, let alone eclipsed. Throughout the thousands of hours of sessions, that in turn led to hundreds of hit records, Jamerson played on only one instrumentthat same simple, off-the-rack, 1962 Fender Precision bass.

Strung with flatwound strings, which he famously never changed, it was quite nondescript for such a legendary instrument. Its only unique identifier was a simply carved and hand-inked single word on the flat part of the neck, hidden from view where it meets with the body. That one syllable carries with it the essence of Jamersons playing legacy in only four letters: Funk.

Almost like the Arthurian legend, many who tried his bass back in those days deemed it to be almost entirely unplayable by anyone except its owner. The sword in the stone had nothing on a bass with a mile-high action and old, dead strings. But in Jamess hands, it had a sound that was absolutely perfect. The seemingly endless number of infectious lines that he playedeither his own improvisation or interpretation of a written part by the arrangeris staggering. Listen to My Guy, Reach Out (Ill Be There), I Was Made to Love Her, and later classics like I Heard It Through the Grapevine, War, and Papa Was a Rollin Stone, and his genius is immediately apparent. Could he have played those lines on another bass? Perhaps a Gibson EB-0, a Rickenbacker 4001 or a Fender Jazz? Of course. They are all very well constructed, popular and professional instruments of the era. But he didnt. He played all those songs on that one, stock P-Bass.

When Motown moved west, following the zeitgeist of the country in the late-60s, James eventually moved to follow it. He immediately discovered that the Los Angeles scene wasnt at all the same as his home turf in Detroit, and despite recording on a number of hits in the 70s, including Marvin Gayes immortal classic Whats Goin On, Al Wilsons number one hit Show and Tell, and what is considered the first disco hit,

Rock the Boat by the Hues Corporation, it wasnt long before Jamersons alcoholism and deepening depression led to hard times. By the early-80s he was no longer on anyones A-list of session bassists, and he was in and out of hospitals for both physical and mental health issues.

May of 1983 found him sitting in the audience on a scalped ticket to watch from afar as the Motown 25th Anniversary television special was taped for broadcast in Pasadena. By the time of his unfortunate and early death only a few months later at just 47 years old, his stature was only a dim reflection of his former glory.

But one final and cruel twist of fate occurred only days before his passing. As he lay on his deathbed, suffering from the final stages of kidney failure, his home was broken into. Among the items stolen was his trusted and beloved instrument of over two decades, the Funk Machine. Vanishing without a trace, it has remained among the missing ever since.

It is at that precise larcenous momentwhen the known facts of the instruments history become pure speculationwhich our story begins.