Basslines #6: “The incomparable James Jamerson,” as he was first credited on this album’s sleeve notes, was the beating heart of Motown’s house band The Funk Brothers. Even when he was blind drunk.

A former upright bassist, he was famed for his one-finger style – “The Hook” – played with his index finger on his 1962 Fender Precision bass guitar; and, of course, for his syncopated chromatic basslines, treating his bass as a lead instrument.

And also for his remarkable capacity for drinking, famously keeping a bottle of Metaxa brandy in his guitar case at all times.

After being recruited by Marvin Gaye, who had seen him in a local bar band, he arrived at the session that produced What’s Going On so intoxicated that he recorded his part lying flat on his back in the studio. And yet… 

He went on to play on countless hit singles, including more than 30 number ones, though this one – arguably his best, amid competition from Bernadette (The Four Tops), Darling Dear (Jackson 5) and Ain’t No Mountin High Enough (Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell)  – didn’t chart at all in the UK.  

It was a different story in America, where it became Motown’s fastest-selling single, shifting 200,000 copies in its first week, and peaking at No.2, eventually selling more than two million copies.

But it very nearly didn’t come out at all.

Motown boss Berry Gordy had already warned Gaye that recording a protest song would be “ridiculous” and when he heard it he described it as “the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” In response, Gaye effectively went on strike until Motown A&R man Harry Balk persuaded vice-president Barney Ales to defy Gordy and put it out.

Recorded, reportedly in a haze of marijuana smoke, in Motown’s own Hitsville studio in Detroit in June 1970, What’s Going On was produced by Gaye himself, marking his departure from the classic pop-soul Motown sound towards more personal material.

First radicalised by the Watts Riot in 1965, and further by conversations with his brother Frankie who had returned from three years’ service in Vietnam – where their cousin was killed in action – he asked himself: “With the world exploding around me, how am I supposed to keep singing love songs?”

What’s Going On was directly  inspired by a police brutality incident witnessed by one of The Four Tops, Renaldo ‘Obie’ Benson, who ended up co-writing the song with Gaye. Benson had been in Berkeley in 1969 when an anti-war protest in the People’s Park was broken up by police in a violent incident dubbed Bloody Thursday. Baffled by the police brutality, Benson reportedly asked: “What’s happening here?”

He later discussed the incident with his songwriter friend Al Cleveland, who composed a song reflecting his concerns, intending it for The Four Tops to sing. But the band turned it down as too political. “My partners told me it was a protest song, Benson said later, “I said ‘No man, it’s a love song, about love and understanding. I’m not protesting, I want to know what’s going on.'”

Disillusioned by their rejection, Benson presented the as-yet untitled song to his Motown friend and colleague Marvin Gaye, who added a new melody and tweaked the song to his liking, adding lyrics to make it seem more like a story and, Benson said later, to make it “more ghetto.”

Even then, Gaye initially intended the song to be recorded by vocal group The Originals, whom he had recently produced, but Benson convinced him to record it as his own song. The rest, as they say, is history.