JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR
Special to the Jewish News

3

ust three years ago
Marshall Mathers was
still known to most
people as Marshall
Mathers, and Paul Rosenberg,
Joel Bacow (a.k.a. Joel Martin),
Jeff and Mark Bass — four
Jewish guys with roots in Oak
Park and Farmington Hills —
were working their day jobs
while dreaming of bigger
things.
Well, now, things are big,
very big. For one thing,
Marshall Mathers today is bet-
ter known as Eminem, or Slim
Shady, a Grammy-nominated
white rapper who is taking the
musical community by storm
with hits like "My Name Is."
And those four guys? Well,
Rosenberg, Bacow and Jeff and
Mark Bass — the latter two
also Grammy nominated — are
right there with him, producing
Eminem's records or managing
his career as he skyrockets to
rap immortality.
"It has been a very strange
trip these last few years," says
Jeff Bass.
The four behind-the-scenes
music impresarios didn't start
out together.
Jeff and Mark (known to the
music world as Marky) Bass
grew up in the Oak Park home

"There was always music in
our house," Mark says, adding
that his father was a jazz drum-
mer who introduced him to
favorite performers Burt
Bacharach and Dionne
Warwick.
Jeff laughs at the noise level
at home. "It was crazy loud,"
he says.
At the same time that Jeff
and Mark were wrapping up
elementary school, Joel Bacow
was finishing up his student
days at Oak Park High School,
where he participated in a
work-study program with Artie
Fields, who owned a large
recording studio in Detroit.
Thrilled with the program,
Bacow decided to forgo college
for the work experience.
"There I was working with
these legitimate big groups like
Funkadelic and the Ohio
Players as a producer or as a
recording engineer. I knew it
was just what I wanted [to
do]," says Bacow, son of Bill
(radio announcer Bill Martin)
and Sara Bacow.
He also decided to take a
summer job as a counselor at
Camp Tamarack. While the job
itself lent little to his develop-
ment as a recording guru,
Tamarack proved to be a piv-
otal intersection in the lives of
the Bass brothers and Bacow.
It was Mark Bass' first sum-

The Music Men

of Stuart and Elaine Bass.
Musically inclined grandsons of
the former president of the
Downtown Synagogue, the pair
learned to play instruments —
the drums, the guitar and the
piano — before kindergarten
and remained active in bands
throughout their public school
careers in the Oak Park School
District.

Jill Davidson Sklar is a'
Huntington Woods-based
freelance writer.

2/18
2000

80

mer at camp. Guess the identi-
ty of his bunk counselor.
While the summer was a
blur of activity and fun, Mark
Bass remembers one incident in
particular. Right before a talent
show competition where he was
to perform some music for the
crowd, Bass got a bad case of
stage fright and all but walked
away from the backstage area.
Bacow convinced him to go on.
"Right before it started, I
chickened out. But Joel was