getting status on first element of pipeline

[Dan DeJohn]

I have a master makefile that runs make in lots of other directories. It 
uses a pattern rule:

$R/%/c :
      $(MAKE) -r -C $@/src all

This works fine, and make stops when there is an error in making one of 
the subdirectories, which is the desired behavior.

I'm trying to make a change to capture the output of each submake in its 
own directory. I changed the command in the pattern rule to:

$R/%/c : FORCE
      $(MAKE) -r -C $@/src all 2>&1 | tee $@/make_output

This works, and puts the make output where I want, but now the return 
code from the submake comes from the tee command, which always succeeds. 
So now the master make doesn't know that one of the submakes has failed. 
I don't want to merely redirect the output of the submakes because I 
want the person running the master make to be able to look at the 
terminal to see the progress within each subdirectory.

I can't find any way to have the submake return the status of the make 
command instead of tee. Any ideas?

Thank you.

Dan DeJohn