Re: [Harp-L] Standing in the Shadow of Motown



Hi Tom -

Yeah, terrific documentary.

While there may be no harp playing in the movie, one of the Funk Brothers guitarists, Joe Messina, is also an incredible jazz chromatic player. His harmonica cds are very cool. Danny Wilson has some info on his site. I don't remember where I purchased the cds from, it may have been through Danny:

http://www.bassharp.com/joemessbio.htm
http://www.bassharp.com/mm.htm

For extremely serious jazz students, Joe wrote a book called "Giant Steps Progression Studies, Over 500 Exercises" available here:

http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/GuavaberryBooks/Domino/fbBooks.html

Not for the faint of heart ;-).

- Slim.

www.SlideManSlim.com
www.JazzHarmonicaSummit.com
www.SlideManSlim.com/blog

On Apr 16, 2010, at 12:08 PM, Tom Halchak wrote:

I was channel surfing a couple nights ago and stumbled across a movie on TCM
called Standing in the Shadow of Motown. If you've never seen it, it is a
movie about the studio musicians at Motown Records. They came to be known
as The Funk Brothers. Produced in 2002, it is a musical documentary based
upon a book written by Alan Slutsky. The musicians were the surviving
original members of The Funk Brothers. Interviews were interlaced with old
films and videos of the acts made famous by Motown and each segment
culminated with one of the big Motown hits sung by someone other than the
original artist. That said, the vocals were all excellent. There is no
harp playing in the movie, but I really enjoyed it anyway. As I watched, I
couldn't help but think about what must have been happening at Chess Records
in the 40's - 60's. Unfortunately I missed the movie Cadillac Records when
it was out and Pocket Full of Soul has come nowhere near Florida yet. I am
going to make it a point to find a copy of Cadillac Records to watch. I
would recommend you do the same with Standing in the Shadow of Motown.




Tom Halchak

Clearwater, FL 33763




This archive was generated by a fusion of Pipermail 0.09 (Mailman edition) and MHonArc 2.6.8.