Happy James Jamerson Day

Monday, January 20, 2025

I won’t pretend that I didn’t doomscroll the cooronation. Refuse to call that an inauguration ceremony, given that ketamine aficionado and the darkest timeline’s Sheldon Cooper referred to the First Felon as a “king” on X. Not sure if that was before or after the founder of the world’s most expensive fireworks company fired off a couple of salutes that would have made a brownshirt blush. Even the Nazis knew when to cringe.

But I’m not here to talk politics, or whatever’s left of politics now that the clown car that is Trump 2.0 has run over it, backed up, then run over it again. I’m here to talk about “What’s Going On”. Literally. The song. Non-metaphorically. Because James Jamerson is a god, of the fallen variety that fits the national outlook, or at least my own.

James Jamerson was one of the greatest bass players of all time, prolific and accomplished on a level that caught the eye of Paul McCartney, himself a decent enough practitioner of the electric bass himself. Jamerson played on more hits than any of his peers, and his work on “What’s Going On” is the stuff of legend, because he took laying down a track literally.

The album as a whole is a clinic of the low end, most of it due to Jamerson, who started out the session drunk, and ended up drunker, as one does, until he had to complete the bass line for “What’s Going On” lying on his back on the studio floor, putting in the work.

Today I, like you, am more than a little Jamerson, flat out, putting in the work, because staying upright feels like more work than it’s worth.