Quote Originally Posted by wingsdad View Post
You probably already know of it, but in case you don't, here's a link to the penultimate resource to studying and learning Jamerson's stuff & technique Standing In The Shadows Of Motown at Amazon.com. Having gone thru High School in the 60's as a white kid playing in a Motown cover band, my guitar style roots have always been firmest in the Funk Brothers' 'trifecta' guitar section. And so to me, when it comes to bassists, there's Jamerson, and then there's everybody else he spawned.

I got this book/cd several years ago, after seeing the TV movie of the same title, and later I got the wonderful DVD of that. It comes with 2 cds to play along with about 50 transcriptions (not Tab) of parts , played by great bassists, mixed so the bass part is alone hard left and the rest of the band is hard right. You can peek at the table of contents & some other pages to see who plays what

But 'I Want You Back' isn't one of them. There's considerable debate as to whether Jamerson played on that tune and 'ABC', the J5's first 2 hits, because by then, he wasn't Motown's lone bassist, as they'd hired other bassists to cover their expansion and for Jamerson's erratic behavior. Bob Babbitt was the first and claims to have played for those 2 tracks. But no matter: the guns they hired were disciples and emulated his style, since they had to reproduce the Motown Sound he bedrocked.
WD, I'm glad you reminded me of SSOM. I was aware of it and interested, but forgot about it when I started thinking of new cabs lately. I'll certainly be picking that up. I had always heard that I Want You Back was one of Jamerson's, but now that you mention it, he was kind of on the downswing by that time. Maybe it was Babbit after all.

I've always been a rock player and only recently began delving into other playing styles. Playing funk, jazz, etc., it's like learning the instrument all over again!

Yes, it's fresh and interesting, but very challenging as well as I change my playing style.