Uriel Jones RIP

A sad week with the passing of several great artists including one the main men behind the Motown Sound - drummer Uriel Jones.

Uriel Jones
Motown drummer who featured on many of the label's finest releases

Obituary; Guardian 26/3/09 Adam Sweeting:

The contribution of the Funk Brothers, the studio band that helped to create the Motown sound in the 1960s, achieved only belated recognition: it was in 2002, with the release of the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown, that the wider world began to understand what a huge part they had played as the engine room of hits by such names as Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Supremes and Martha and the Vandellas.

The film prompted Uriel Jones, the last surviving regular Funk Brothers drummer, who has died aged 74, to comment that "a lot of people are calling it a rediscovery. But we were never discovered. How can it be a rediscovery?"

Jones was born in Detroit and, throughout his life, gave credit to music for saving him. He was sent to the city's Moore school for boys, a disciplinary institution, and it was there that he began playing drums. He realised that his aptitude offered him a valuable opportunity, and he stuck to his task diligently enough to land a job in Gaye's touring band.

Read full Obituary

Check out video of Uriel Jones in action here.

Here's a tribute from Ralph Terrana