Motown bass — James Jamerson's approach in the Funk Brothers: the drums (Benny Benjamin, Uriel Jones) are plain — four on the floor, snare backbeat, tambourine (shaker) doubling 2 and 4, hat eighths — the piano pounds quarter-note chords and the guitar chanks 2 and 4, and all the movement is in the bass. The line here over I–IV: root on 1 with a repeated sixteenth, up through the 3rd and 5th to the octave, down the flat seventh, and a chromatic walk A–Ab–G into the next bar; the second bar does the same from F and adds a D–C–Bb turn. Syncopation is in the sixteenth pickups, not in leaving the beat.
Listen for the bass as a second melody that never contradicts the kick: every beat still has a root or chord tone on it, and the chromatic notes are passing tones on the weak sixteenths. Mute the drums and the line still swings; mute the bass and the band sounds like a demo.
Practice: metronome on all four, sixteenth pickups short; then invent a different walk into bar 2 while keeping the downbeat roots. Compare disco-octaves, the same drums with the bass stripped to octaves.