James Jamerson meets Mike McLean's pre-amp

[babalouie]

Hello Forum
Real name: Paul McGrath. I have been writing about music in Toronto since 1976, for The Globe and Mail newspaper and for CBC Radio and Television.
There are extraordinarily knowledgeable people gathered here, and I have learned a lot over the last decade or so. I am pleased to be allowed in.

I have always been fascinated by how new bits of machinery can alter the course of music in an instant - the Gibson fuzz pedal on the Stones' Satisfaction, Hendrix's wah, the Echo-Sonic amp, the list could go on.

So it is with Mike McLean's pre-amp. The most precise estimate I have seen of its arrival in the studio is "mid-1966", which is not precise enough for the historian in me. At the same moment, [[if "mid" can mean July) we have to somehow explain James Jamerson's sudden - really sudden - ascent into the realm of the gods, his bass work starting from "Reach Out" [[July 6) and going on for roughly the next 2 1\2 years, that elevated the instrument beyond any previous status, influenced every bassist since and propelled Motown into its third great season of glory: Temps, Tops, Marvin, Stevie. Pardon any simplification there.

Beans Bowles, in Standing In The Shadows Of Love, made the connection, saying James could hear himself for the first time and that prompted him to get busier.
So, I ask the forum if anyone has any thoughts about this, any more connection like the one Beans made.
In particular, someone somewhere talked about Jamerson being able to "hear the holes, hear the spaces." I would love to be able to use that in what I'm working on, but the insight does not belong to me and when I came across it I was lazy and did not attribute it. After long hours trying, I cannot retrieve it. I am wondering if anyone else remembers that or if someone else had said something similar.

In 2008, before I was making mental leaps like that, I had a long series of communications with McLean without asking him specifically about that. Huge missed opportunity. Let me post a bit from his communication about the overall Motown sound which, as a classical fan, he hated.
"Motown was desperate to make their productions as appealing to the mass audience as possible. Above all, they wanted to "get a HIT" [[a million seller) so that they could make a lot of money and continue to grow. There were problems of compromise which caused maintenance of natural timbre to assume a low priority. For example: If the record was going to have mass appeal, the lyrics had to be intelligible. The tendency to cram ten pounds of music into a five pound bag [[to get more "appeal") often led to sounds of certain musical instruments having the same frequencies as the singer. This caused "masking" of the lyrics so that they could not be understood. The natural thing to do was to reduce the loudness of those masking frequencies by using an "equalizer" to unequalize those offending instruments to correct the problem. End result: total destruction of the naturalness of timbre of those instruments. I found this highly offensive, and I loathed the resulting "Motown sound." The traditional way to fix this problem was to arrange the music properly. All one need do is listen to a recording of Frank Sinatra made by Capitol Records during the late 1950's, to hear music that does not require this sort of "JACKING IT ALL OUT OF SHAPE" to make it commercial."

Mike was well-meaning but kinda prickly, all in all.

Many thanks for your patience if you read this all.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

While probably not exactly what you're looking for, it does speak to the equipment built by Mike McLean that allowed James and the other guitarists to hear themselves clearly; and how it eliminated recording the guitars through mics placed at the speakers.

https://www.talkbass.com/threads/the...on-amp.854013/

[ralpht]

Paul, dont feel picked on. Mike got prickly with everybody.He made a couple of brief appearances on the forum but usually ended up insulting someone.That was Mike. I loved the guy. I once made the HUGE mistake of saying the console in Studio A [[ a creation of Mikeś) Looked like it was made in high school metal shop. He barbecued me on that one. I still love the guy.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

I've been reading a lot about Mike McLean these last couple of days -every link I come across. Bits and pieces, and a fuzzy picture emerges that this man was serious about the music. When I read Paul's recollections of how seemingly dismissive Mr. McLean was of "The Motown Sound", [["ten pounds of music into a five pound bag") at first it seems unexpectedly harsh and damning. Then, as I read about the family into which he was born and their love and appreciation for classical music, I could understand the comments a lot more. Motown may not have been the music Mr. McLean particularly enjoyed [[music for the masses) but the irony is that it was precisely his devotion to classical music and recording it properly that paid off in spades for Motown.

[babalouie]

While probably not exactly what you're looking for, it does speak to the equipment built by Mike McLean that allowed James and the other guitarists to hear themselves clearly; and how it eliminated recording the guitars through mics placed at the speakers.

https://www.talkbass.com/threads/the...on-amp.854013/

That is the clearest all-in-one explanation Mike has ever done. Thanks for that. I am surprised, in going through the long transcripts and e-mails between us that in general he had no interest in how his equipment improved the Motown sound, mostly because, as noted above, he hated it.

[babalouie]

Mike could never understand how anyone could listen to Motown or any other pop at the time once they had understood Bach. Bach was just better, in his view, in every possible respect. MIke's classical bias certainly led to his disate for the Motown sound. Classical engineering was about accurate, transparent records of instruments in a studio. Berry Gordy wanted none of that. He knew the Motown Sound was an unreal fantasy land, and that it worked for that reason. He was right. That being said, Mike's classical bias meant he was hip to what classical engineers were doing. He borrowed techniques from Deutsche Grammaphon hat helped everyone in the Motown sound better.

[babalouie]

Good to know. He shunned me for a while for suggesting a couple of Four Tops tunes beat out most classical vocal performances. He was passionate, opinionated, crotchety as hell, some times mean and then he would turn around and give you a good intro to the next person down the chain "We have had considerable conversation, and I have found him to be a civilized, well educated, mild mannered and intelligent fellow." Jeez, I thought he hated me.

I still don't know why Mike hung around Motown when his skill set could have got him a job with the classical departments of Decca or Columbia or RCA

[ralpht]

My opinion: Mike was always searching for the perfect audio. What he would refer to as ¨The hot set-up¨ He showed me how superior Deutsche Grammaphone record pressings were. When the Rolling Stones Let It Bleed album came out, he literally was up all night listening to it, marveling at the excellent engineering. Mike was a trip, but he knew quality and strove for it.

[jobucats]

Reading these comments/opinions about Mike McLean is very interesting to me. I consider myself a serious musician. While loving the Motown sound, I can understand where a person with a more classical background in how one hears music might have a problem with the audio sound of Motown [[lots of things crammed into a small container). I had friends, back in the 60s and 70s, who also loathed the Motown sound because while they liked the songs themselves, the actual sound production sounded cheap and contrived to them. I, too, have my quirks about performing music with others. In the church setting, most musicians I perform with tend to rush eighth and sixteenth note passages and create a "train running out of control" which crashes at the end of the song. They don't hear what they're doing and then wonder "why did we end up faster than we started?" So I can relate to Mike McLean states about the Motown recording/mixing/mastering process.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

That is the clearest all-in-one explanation Mike has ever done. Thanks for that. I am surprised, in going through the long transcripts and e-mails between us that in general he had no interest in how his equipment improved the Motown sound, mostly because, as noted above, he hated it.

I'm so glad that helped out! It's been fascinating chasing down the myriad of links featuring conversations with Mike McLean. Mike is fascinating. At first, I thought it was odd that someone who did just about the most to make The Motown Sound something attainable and tangible in a practical application would practically detest what he helped to achieve. But then that's what makes it so intriguing, the sheer dichotomy of it. But then again, there have been others that over the years I found out were really dismissive of some kind of work or performance they did that seemed to be fully embraced by the world-at-large.

I think about actress Tina Louise who fairly detested the fact that she was on the show Gilligan's Island. She saw herself as a classically-trained actress and the sitcom was a thorn in her side for years. The funny thing though is the irony that she WAS so accomplished as an actress that she alone saw the key to the Ginger Grant character that had been eluding the producers all along. She knew instinctively how to play up the Marilyn Monroe aspect and that's what made it work. It wasn't until years later that her daughter helped her realize all the joy that the show and her character brought to people and that started to melt her disdain for the show.

90s Grunge band, Blind Melon had a hit, "No Rain." It totally eluded the band why that song became such a huge hit. It wasn't representative at all of the harder-edged music they usually released and in fact, I believe the song was an afterthought, something recorded last minute and just to record something. I think I recall reading that it wasn't meant to be a single release, but it caught on somehow. Even though the general public loved the song, it was a double-edged sword for the band and they weren't exactly happy about it.

My thought is that even though Mike didn't like Motown's music or pop records in general, he did was a professional first and foremost. He had a job he was hired to do and he did it 100%. Perhaps the pay was such that he was able to live a comfortable life, but I'm guessing it was more about the professional pride he took in his work, even if he felt it wasn't being used in the way he would have preferred it. Interestingly, there are quite a few interviews I came across where Mike gave little indication of his dislike for the way the music was being produced at Motown. He came across as a very practical, realist. This may not have been the music he had a passion for, but at the same time it seemed he was aware that he had helped build something that revolutionized the industry.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

Reading these comments/opinions about Mike McLean is very interesting to me. I consider myself a serious musician. While loving the Motown sound, I can understand where a person with a more classical background in how one hears music might have a problem with the audio sound of Motown [[lots of things crammed into a small container). I had friends, back in the 60s and 70s, who also loathed the Motown sound because while they liked the songs themselves, the actual sound production sounded cheap and contrived to them. I, too, have my quirks about performing music with others. In the church setting, most musicians I perform with tend to rush eighth and sixteenth note passages and create a "train running out of control" which crashes at the end of the song. They don't hear what they're doing and then wonder "why did we end up faster than we started?" So I can relate to Mike McLean states about the Motown recording/mixing/mastering process.

This whole thread has turned into something eye-opening. To hear how Motown's productions were heard by "the other side", so to speak- seriously inclined musicians such as yourself, Rock musicians, Classical music lovers. Isn't it always the way, though that what one person considers horrendous is enjoyed and nearly obsessively loved by another. The whole thing of cramming 10 pounds of music into a 5 pound bag is EXACTLY what I love about the whole Motown Sound thing. I love that it isn't exactly pristine and perfectly-balanced. Yet at the same time, I find that I do enjoy listening to our Classical music station. What I used to dismiss as boring, now I find exciting, but in ways very different to Motown excitement. Still, I get it. I really do understand why and how some just can never and never will get into Motown.

[[And oddly, I think I get exactly what you're talking about when you refer to musicians who rush those eight and sixteenth note passages. A critic was writing about the Temptations' "Since I Lost My Baby" and noted the section where the musicians had to play these precise, single-note beats. He marveled that any other group of musicians would probably have blown a few of those 16 or so successive beats, but the Funk Brothers were so tight, it came off perfectly. I've heard songs that featured a successive run of eight, sixteenth or whatever notes and it could get really sloppy in a second unless the musicians really knew what they were doing. I've played with enough weekend musicians to realize it's very rare to find a number of players who can pull that sort of thing off well. Yeah, I'm not that accomplished either!)

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

My opinion: Mike was always searching for the perfect audio. What he would refer to as ¨The hot set-up¨ He showed me how superior Deutsche Grammaphone record pressings were. When the Rolling Stones Let It Bleed album came out, he literally was up all night listening to it, marveling at the excellent engineering. Mike was a trip, but he knew quality and strove for it.

And I think that is why Motown's records sounded so good. Mr. McLean was aiming for perfection. He brought that passion and applied it to what he was doing at Motown. Had he worked at Crown Records, I suspect he would have elevated what they were doing tenfold- then again, Crown WAS built on rush jobs, so maybe that wouldn't have worked out too well.

[babalouie]

My opinion: Mike was always searching for the perfect audio. What he would refer to as ¨The hot set-up¨ He showed me how superior Deutsche Grammaphone record pressings were. When the Rolling Stones Let It Bleed album came out, he literally was up all night listening to it, marveling at the excellent engineering. Mike was a trip, but he knew quality and strove for it.

I always thought "Let It Bleed" was a superior sounding piece of work [[the precise sounds in the opening to Gimme Shelter for starters). Knowing Mike was knocked out by it raises my estimation of it even higher.

[Sotosound]

Fabulous thread.

The mono mix of "Reach Out, I'll Be There" is a great example of a recording where drums don't sound like drums and electric bass doesn't sound like electric bass because the EQ is quite extreme, but on AM radio you know that you're hearing drums and bass [[because the EQ is quite extreme ), and they sound really great.

[jobucats]

[[And oddly, I think I get exactly what you're talking about when you refer to musicians who rush those eight and sixteenth note passages. A critic was writing about the Temptations' "Since I Lost My Baby" and noted the section where the musicians had to play these precise, single-note beats. He marveled that any other group of musicians would probably have blown a few of those 16 or so successive beats, but the Funk Brothers were so tight, it came off perfectly. I've heard songs that featured a successive run of eight, sixteenth or whatever notes and it could get really sloppy in a second unless the musicians really knew what they were doing. I've played with enough weekend musicians to realize it's very rare to find a number of players who can pull that sort of thing off well. Yeah, I'm not that accomplished either!)[/QUOTE]
Yes, I've had those moments, as a church musician, where I've just wanted to quit because the other main instrumentalist will aggressively start speeding up 8th and 16th note passages while the director, more or less, gives up. Then at the end, everyone says, "This was a train wreck. What happened?"

I believe there is something in a lot of artists that triggers them and causes others to believe the artist is just being a 'bitch' or 'too demanding' when the artist, as he/she perceives it in her musical head, wants it 'done right.'

[Boogiedown]

Nice thread!

Having worked record store retail I can attest there were many a clientele who thought pop/hit records had nothing to do with listening to real music ....

[bob_olhsson]

Lots of memories here. Both Berry Gordy and Mike loved the sound of Rudy Van Gelder's jazz recordings. I understand Berry was also not very happy with the sound of Motown's records, but both were happy about the excellent record sales.

The guitar amplifier was built to simplify recording in a small space however it turned out to have a very positive effect on the music because the musicians were hearing themselves on a studio monitor. This had an immense effect on their "touch" and their ability to hear and respond to the arrangement. According to John Windt, who assembled it, the amplifier was actually customized to the output of James, Robert, Eddie and Joe's guitars plus an extra channel for Joe's acoustic guitar pickup.

For good or for bad, we pioneered and changed pop music recording forever with overdubbing, punching parts in and arranging the final mix with eq. and effects. When you record everything live, the arrangement gets straightened out or you have a trainwreck. That's a whole different world.

[garyr]

In the church setting, most musicians I perform with tend to rush eighth and sixteenth note passages and create a "train running out of control" which crashes at the end of the song. They don't hear what they're doing and then wonder "why did we end up faster than we started?"

jobucats, I have been playing in club bands for decades and this seems to be a universal tendency. Musicians almost always play a song faster than it was originally intended and have to consciously strive to play a song at a restrained tempo. Maybe it is the excitement of the moment.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

Lots of memories here. Both Berry Gordy and Mike loved the sound of Rudy Van Gelder's jazz recordings. I understand Berry was also not very happy with the sound of Motown's records, but both were happy about the excellent record sales.

The guitar amplifier was built to simplify recording in a small space however it turned out to have a very positive effect on the music because the musicians were hearing themselves on a studio monitor. This had an immense effect on their "touch" and their ability to hear and respond to the arrangement. According to John Windt, who assembled it, the amplifier was actually customized to the output of James, Robert, Eddie and Joe's guitars plus an extra channel for Joe's acoustic guitar pickup.

For good or for bad, we pioneered and changed pop music recording forever with overdubbing, punching parts in and arranging the final mix with eq. and effects. When you record everything live, the arrangement gets straightened out or you have a trainwreck. That's a whole different world.

I remember reading [[or I should say I believe I remember reading) that Berry wasn't pleased with the sound of Mary Wells' "My Guy," which just floored me because it's such an immense-sounding record. My first recollection of that record was that it had such a classy, sophisticated sound to it. As I got older, I still held that feeling. Had it been recorded in Hollywood or New York with much more advanced recording equipment, I think the sound could easily have ended up somewhat antiseptic; clean and technically pristine, but also with no "personality." I get that around that time Motown was working with, was it a three-track recorder? I can tell with many of those records that there was a lot of "bouncing down" and overdubbing and what not, but it ended up giving the records a rather "fat" sound that was oddly gritty AND polished and glistening at the same time. Then when the eight track came into use, there was yet another sort of sound I can usually distinguish from the three-track recordings, and that sound- I can't say I preferred it over the three-track sound- I actually love the sound of both eras of recording.

I get the striving for recording perfection, and that's what made those Motown records sound so good- but for me personally, what you all did at Motown, especially from 1964 through 1967, ruined it for me as far as music from other record companies. I mean for real. There was just something sonically going on with the way those records were recorded, mixed and engineered that I went absolutely bonkers for. The only other type of music that comes somewhat close to giving me that feeling comes from the Jazz records of the 50's, particularly Dave Brubeck's recordings. Motown, to me, had a very clean sound, but there was also a certain sort of intangible, esoteric characteristic to the records that nobody else had that kept it from sounding perfect but generic. When I listen to the entire Marvin & Tammi "United" LP, that's one of the best examples of the sound I'll never get enough of. I've tried qualifying and quantifying and describing what exactly it is sonically that I love about that period [['64-'67) but in over 40-some years, I've never been able to adequately put it into words.

[bob_olhsson]

We were actually far more advanced than Hollywood and New York only we didn't know it. The difference was that we couldn't record and mix everything at once live like they could due to the size of our studio.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

We were actually far more advanced than Hollywood and New York only we didn't know it. The difference was that we couldn't record and mix everything at once live like they could due to the size of our studio.

Which, I feel, ended up being something that gave the records that distinctive sound. Everytime you overdub, you have to kind of do some "tweaking" here or there to make up for the slight loss in the original recording and I think, in an odd way, that little bit of tweaking adds it's own color to the final product. Or I might just be taking out of the side of my head. At any rate, I think recording everything at once is fine for classical or jazz, but in pop music, I've heard some records [[even some late 60s Motown album cuts) that are literally so perfect as to be full and almost colorless.

[tmd]

Having been a longtime Soulful Detroit blogger-since 2001, I remember the many blogs of MM, hopefully they are all archived. One of a kind to say the least, would often get way to technical for me, but BG called him a genius in his auto and started with Motown as a teenager. Would make for a good documentary.