Allan: That's true, and I'll tell you why. You're gonna say, "what made him so special". Well, I'll tell you: the acoustic bass had been around for centuries. But the electric bass had only been invented in the early part of the 1950s. And pretty much for the first decade, nobody knew what to do with it; it didn't have a voice.

You know how when you hold an electric bass, you hold it diagonally? In the first years of the electric bass, you would see converted upright players actually hold it vertically! They just thought it was just a different upright bass, and they played it that way, not just in posture, but also in the types of licks. Most of the bassists were playing this kind of cocktail lounge kind of bass, playing a steady [hums quarter-note bass thump] boom, boom, boom, boom.

Then Jamerson comes out of nowhere, and then starts do [hums fast staccato pulsing Motown lick] do ba doopa doopa doopa do ba doopa da do do do. He completely invented the vocabulary of this new instrument, and made it a virtuoso position, instead of just a foundation position, with all those syncopations, and all this incredible feel that none of these other converted upright bassists had. He opened up the possibility of what the instrument could do to the rest of the world, and then all of a sudden, everybody's copying his lines, making hits, and they have no idea who this guy is.

And it ate him up--that's what killed him.

Aside from the Motown hits, he'd hear hits from other producers, other record companies, and they were using his bass lines, and his ideas. Not only did he not get anything for it, but nobody even knew it was him! And it just ate at him.

Ed: One thing I was really surprised at from reading your book, which I don't know if the film makes clear, is that Jamerson did play on some big sessions when he got in L.A.

Allan: Oh yeah. He went out there, and he was his worst enemy. He could have done a lot more than he did, but his drinking was out of control by that time, and the contractors didn't want to deal with him. He was very headstrong, and easily offended, and if you didn't like what he was doing, it was trouble.

His demise was a combination of a lot of things, but he had his moment, but its rewards weren't given to him in his lifetime.

Ed: Jamerson obviously changed the bass from its oompah background to a more melodic 8th and 16th note sound. How did he invent his style?

Allan: That's kind of like asking how Coltrane or Hendrix...you can point to stylistic things like his blues and jazz background, but there are people in the world who are just touched. Different people influence music in lots of ways. And there's a kind of a smooth curve where they take the music in a different direction. But every once in a while, you get a guy who's a sharp right angle, like Hendrix and Coltrane, and Jamerson. They're just touched by God, and with what they do, music completely makes a 90 degree turn.