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I’ve been lucky enough to work on documentaries that gave me a chance to meet and learn about amazing people and stories that I would never have known about. When you work on a documentary you have a chance to preserve the story and lives of people and that’s what makes working on documentaries so wonderful and difficult. I finally was able to see the film Standing in the Shadows of Motown on the weekend. The documentary tells the story of the Funk Brothers, who were the heart and soul that made the Motown sound what it was. I’ve always loved Motown songs and heard many of them on Danny Finkleman’s CBC Radio show Finkleman’s 45s, but I never thought about how the Motown sound originated. The most obvious answer is that it came from the session musicans who played on all of the songs. They are an amazing group of incredibly talented musicians who never received proper credit or appreciation of what they accomplished. What’s amazing to watch is a band reassembled after many years and it seems as if they never took a break from playing. The film features a perfect blend between interviews, recreations and performances by the Funk Brothers with a near-perfect structure that kept me entertained and left me content. One of the great music documentaries.