Roburt, master bass player Tony Newton appears to have been virtually completely omitted from all the Funk Brothers' histories and eulogies over the years yet he was as much a central figure as anybody in the Motown sound in the early and mid 60s as bassist together with James Jamerson .
He traveled with the Motown Review band which toured the UK in 1965 as the bass player in Jamerson's place because Berry Gordy needed Jamerson to stay in Detroit to record. That's him you see on bass behind the artists in the Ready Steady Go Motown Special from the time.
He was also bassist and music director on the road for Smokey and the Miracles right through the early to mid 60s.
In the later 60s he moved to Invictus / Hot Wax with H-D-H and played on many of the companies's biggest hits and formed and became the central member of the 8th Day along with Melvin Davis after the group had its first hit ; the group as we know never existed until the first record became a hit.
I was lucky enough to meet him and have a chat when he toured Australia in the early 90s as music director for Thelma Houston. Up til then - like everybody else - I had believed that the Motown sound had been purely down to the usual 6 or 7 names mentioned: Jamerson, Benny Benjamin, Earl Van Dyke, Jack Ashford etc so I was stunned when he told me he that he had played bass on countless actual hit recordings like Stop In The Name Of Love , Where Did Our Love Go, Baby Love. I diplomatically asked him how could that be and he proceeded to explain that on many of those hit recordings Motown employed two bass players playing at the same time ! As he explains in his autobiography it was actually him AND Jamerson playing together on those hits, Jamerson playing the low parts and Newton the high parts.
His autobiography makes interesting reading .... https://www.tonynewtongoldthunder.com/