Mike,

Of course, session musicians are normally both excellent and uncredited. However, a "house band" situation is somewhat different from the more usual practice of assembling a different set of players for every session. That Motown gang was so essential to an entire "sound" of many different front-artists over many years, and were uniquely anonymous for such a stable band.

The "MGs" of Memphis offer a stark comparison because they were playing such a similar style, equally successfully, at exactly the same time, and *they* got credit and, at least among the terminally hip, a fair amount of recognition.

I can think of a few other long-running studio bands who have achieved legendary status as groups. In New Orleans, the mid-50s house band(s) at Cosimo's studio have gained recognition at least in retrospect, and the 60s-70s group who manned Alen Toussaint's SeaSaint Studios developed their own identity as the Meters.

In 50s-60s Nashville, some of the most outstanding session players at least got to release instrumentals under their own names, e.g., Bill Black's Combo and the great pianist Floyd Cramer. Several of these tunes "crossed over" to pop, so I got to hear them even in New York/New Jersey, where there was no country-music media when I was growing up there. Cramer's "On The Rebound" was one of my favorite records back in 7th or 8th grade, and one of the select few 45s I ever bought.

Those guys at Motown were not only great players, but a great long-running *group,* and deserved more recognition than they got at the time. At a time when I knew all about everyone who played for Stax/Volt, I didn't even realize that all those Motown hits, by so many different artists, were all the work of one terrific band.