Funk is an American
musical style that originated in the mid- to late-1960s when African
American musicians blended soul music, soul jazz and R&B into a
rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and
harmony, and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums
to the foreground. Unlike R&B and soul songs, which had many chord
changes, funk songs are often based on an extended vamp on a single
chord.
Like much of African
inspired music, funk typically consists of a complex groove with rhythm
instruments such as electric guitar, electric bass, Hammond organ, and
drums playing interlocking rhythms. Funk bands also usually have a horn
section of several saxophones, trumpets, and in some cases, a trombone,
which plays rhythmic "hits".
Influential African
American funk performers include James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone,
George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Curtis Mayfield, and
Bootsy Collins.
Notable 1970s funk bands
included Rufus feat. Chaka Khan, Earth, Wind & Fire, Eric Burdon
& War, Tower of Power, Average White Band, The Ohio Players, The
Commodores, Kool & the Gang and Cameo, though many of these most
famous bands in the genre also played disco and soul extensively. Funk
music was a major influence on the development of 1970s disco music, and
funk samples were present in most styles of house music and early hip
hop music. It is also the main influence of go-go. Funk also has left
its mark on new wave, and its pulse is evident in post punk as well.
James
Brown and funk as a genre
By mid-1960s, James Brown
had developed his signature groove that emphasized the downbeat – with
heavy emphasis "on the one" (the first beat of every measure)
– to etch his distinctive sound, rather than the backbeat that was
familiar to many R&B and soul musicians. Brown often cued his band
with the command "On the one!," changing the percussion
emphasis/accent from the one-two-three-four backbeat of traditional soul
music to the one-two-three-four downbeat – but with an even-note
syncopated guitar rhythm (on quarter notes two and four) featuring a
hard-driving, repetitive brassy swing. This one-three beat launched the
shift in Brown's signature funk music style, starting with his 1964 hit
single, "Out of Sight" and his 1965 hit, "Papa's Got a
Brand New Bag."
Brown's innovations
pushed the funk music style further to the forefront with releases such
as "Cold Sweat" (1967), "Mother Popcorn" (1969) and
"Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine" (1970), discarding
even the twelve bar blues featured in his earlier music. Instead,
Brown's music was overlaid with "catchy, anthemic vocals"
based on "extensive vamps" in which he also used his voice as
"a percussive instrument with frequent rhythmic grunts and with
rhythm-section patterns ... [resembling] West African polyrhythms."
Throughout his career, Brown's frenzied vocals, frequently punctuated
with screams and grunts, channeled the "ecstatic ambiance of the
black church" in a secular context. Although "Papa's Got a
Brand New Bag" and "Cold Sweat" were widely credited as
the prototype songs that launched the funk genre, "Out of
Sight" was the breakthrough hit that signaled the shift in Brown's
sound to establish funk as a distinct genre.
In a 1990 interview,
Brown offered his reason for switching the rhythm of his music: "I
changed from the upbeat to the downbeat ... Simple as that,
really." According to Maceo Parker, Brown's former saxophonist,
playing on the downbeat was at first hard for him and took some getting
used to. Reflecting back to his early days with Brown's band, Parker
reported that he had difficulty playing "on the one" during
solo performances, since he was used to hearing and playing with the
accent on the second beat.
George
Clinton -Parliament and Funkadelic
Under the guiding hand of
mastermind George Clinton, the affiliated groups Parliament and
Funkadelic established funk as an heir to and outgrowth of soul. If
James Brown is funk’s founding father, Clinton has been its chief
architect and tactician. Over the decades, he’s presided over a
musical empire that’s included Parliament and Funkadelic, plus
numerous offshoots (such as the Brides of Funkenstein and Parlet), solo
careers (Clinton’s and bassist Bootsy Collins’ being the notable)
and aggregates (the P-Funk All-Stars). The pioneering work of Parliament
and Funkadelic in the Seventies—driven by Clinton’s conceptually
inventive mind and the band members’ tight ensemble playing and
stretched-out jamming—prefigured everything from rap and hip-hop to
techno and alternative. Clinton’s latter-day disciples include Prince
and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Between them, Parliament
and Funkadelic virtually defined the melting pot known as funk: a
melding of rhythm & blues, jazz, gospel and psychedelic rock. With
them, Clinton has purveyed larger-than-life characters and concepts from
the stage, culminating in such theatrical milestones as the Mothership,
a mock flying saucer from which the black space “aliens” of Clinton’s
musical entourage alighted onstage. Though his musical productions have
been typified by danceable grooves and driven by a laser-sharp
sociological wit, Clinton’s ultimate goal is serious: “I am intent
on making the word funk as legitimate as jazz and rock and roll.”
George Clinton spent his
teenage years in Plainfield, New Jersey, where he founded a vocal group
called the Parliaments. They recorded as far back as 1956 but didn’t
impact the charts until 1967, when “(I Wanna) Testify"—a
prescient mix of Sixties soul, rock and pop—went #3 R&B and #20
pop. That year, Clinton began listening to the new wave of psychedelic
rock by bands such as Cream, Vanilla Fudge and Sly and the Family Stone.
The dual influence of cutting-edge soul and rock served as inspirations
to Funkadelic. In 1970, Clinton dropped the “s” from his other band,
and Parliament was born.
Each group had a distinct
identity and alternated releases into the late Seventies on a variety of
labels—Invictus, Westbound, Warner Bros.—with Clinton dividing his
time between them. Parliament was essentially a horn-based soul group
and Funkadelic a guitar-based rock group, but both were built on a
foundation of funk. Parliament and Funkadelic were flip sides of the
same coin, and these overlapping entities’ respective outputs were
referred to in stylistic shorthand as “P-Funk.” In Parliament’s
self-referential theme song, “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up),”
Clinton and entourage referred to themselves as “dealers of funky
music, P-Funk, uncut funk, The Bomb.”
Parliament and Funkadelic
frequently resorted to allegorical concept albums to make larger points
about societal injustices and ways in which a community of like-minded
souls could liberate themselves from its constrictions. Clinton animated
the moral conflict between opposing forces of good (the trippy funkateer
“Starchild") and evil (the uptight, uptight “Sir Nose D’Void
of Funk") over the course of a five-year run of Parliament albums,
from Mothership Connection (1976) to Trombipulation (1981). Meanwhile,
Funkadelic gelled on one of the finest funk albums ever produced, One
Nation Under a Groove, whose title track was a rousing anthem of union
and community.
Parliament and Funkadelic
dominated and revolutionized the music scene in the latter half of the
Seventies—particularly in 1978 and 1979, when they racked up four #1
R&B hits: “Flash Light,” “One Nation Under a Groove,” Aqua
Boogie” and “(Not Just) Knee Deep.” Clinton’s main collaborators
during Parliament-Funkadelic’s heyday included keyboardists Bernie
Worrell and Walter “Junie” Morrison and bassist William “Bootsy”
Collins. Known for his star-shaped sunglasses, glittery “space bass”
and cartoonish demeanor, Collins became a funk icon and solo star in his
own right. Melding soul, funk, jazz and psychedelia, a succession of
P-Funk guitarists—including the late Eddie Hazel, Mike Hampton and
DeWayne “Blackbyrd” McKnight—have carried forward the legacy of
Jimi Hendrix with their adventurous, exploratory soloing.
During the 1970s,
Parliament, Funkadelic and a host of related offshoots placed roughly 60
singles on the R&B charts and were among the hottest attractions on
the concert circuit. They were responsible for some of the most
theatrical tours ever undertaken, deploying one of the largest props—the
otherworldly “Mothership"—ever dragged from city to city.
Financial, legal and personal problems grounded the Mothership in 1980,
but Clinton resurfaced stronger than ever as a solo artist on Capitol
Records.. “Atomic Dog,” the popular dance-funk centerpiece of 1982’s
Computer Games—one of Rolling Stone‘s 100 Greatest Albums of the 80’s—topped
the R&B chart for four weeks. In 1983, Clinton also released an
album credited to “the P-Funk All-Stars,” which drew on the talents
of various members of Parliament and Funkadelic (including Bootsy
Collins), plus guests like Sly Stone and Bobby Womack.
A new generation of hip
young listeners discovered P-Funk via rap and hip-hop records that
heavily sampled Clinton’s vast body of work. By the Nineties, Clinton
was widely recognized as a black-music patriarch and pioneer whose
contributions put him in a league with James Brown. In fact, Clinton is
second only to Brown as the most heavily sampled artist. Meanwhile, the
Parliament-Funkadelic juggernaut has shown no signs of slowing down,
remaining active on the recording and touring fronts as George Clinton
and the P-Funk All-Stars. One of their later albums—The Awesome Power
of a Fully Operational Mothership (T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M.), released in 1996—returned
the funk collective to the concept that helped establish them as
visionaries 20 years earlier.
Parliament Funkadelic was
notorious for its sheer quantity of musicians: countless members have
joined, left and re-joined the collective over its decades of performing
and recording, and live shows often boasted up to 30 musicians on stage
at once. While P-Funk would have never existed without the work of all
the musicians and artists in the historic “P-Funk mob,” the
following are often viewed as the band’s most iconic and influential.
George
Clinton
Born in North Carolina in 1941, Clinton began singing doo-wop in
New Jersey in the 1950s, when he formed the Parliaments, the
predecessors to Parliament Funkadelic. Clinton remains the
figurehead of P-Funk, and is widely known for his extravagant
costumes and hairstyles as well as his creative influence on
countless musicians. As a singer and lyricist, he broke musical
boundaries with his political outspokenness, vocal protests and
artistic flamboyance. Despite persisting legal and financial
difficulties, Clinton has had a successful recording career
following the dissolution of P-Funk in the early 1980s, with
albums such as Atomic Dog; The Cinderella Theory; Hey Man,
Smell My Finger and T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M., as well as touring as
a solo artist and with the P-Funk All Stars, which released How
Late Do You Have 2 B B 4 U R Absent? in fall 2005.
Bootsy
Collins
Born William Collins in 1951 in Cincinnati, Bootsy Collins first
started playing bass in the late 1960s with his band The
Pacesetters, which also featured his brother, Catfish Collins,
on guitar. The group was James Brown’s back-up band in the
late 1960s and early 1970s. Collins joined P-Funk in 1972 and
continued to record with the band for years as well as on solo
and side projects such as Bootsy’s Rubber Band. One of the
most legendary bass players in music history, Collins’s career
has boasted singles such as “The Pinocchio Theory” and “Bootzilla,”
best-selling albums including Ahh… The Name is Bootsy Baby!
and Bootsy? Player of the Year, as well as performances
with the Bootzilla Orchestra and with bands such as Deee-Lite.
Eddie
Hazel
Legendary guitarist Hazel was famous for his unconventional
playing stylings, as exemplified in such P-Funk classics as
“Maggot Brain,” and his pioneering of such musical fusions
as mixing funk, metal, soul, psychedelia and R&B. Born in
Brooklyn in 1950, Hazel grew up in New Jersey and first played
for the Parliaments’ back-up band as a teenager in the late
1960s, in a group that would later become Funkadelic. Hazel’s
trademark riffs contributed musically to a number of P-Funk
albums, but by the mid-1970s, his problems with drug abuse had
began to affect his work, and he was forced to leave the band
for a few years, returning in the late 1970s. Hazel continued to
play with George Clinton and as a solo artist until his death in
1992 from internal bleeding and liver failure.
Garry
Shider
Known for his soulful voice, Shider was born in Plainfield, NJ
and grew up singing with gospel legends. After a short time
living in Canada, Shider returned to the U.S. to join P-Funk. He
sang lead on many of the band’s most well-known songs,
including “Cosmic Slop,” “One Nation,” and “Getting to
Know You,” and also co-authored hits such as “Atomic Dog.”
As a solo artist in the post-Funkadelic years, Shider has
received accolades for his songwriting and producing work,
including several Grammy nominations and Dove Gospel awards.
Bernie
Worrell
Raised in Plainfield, NJ, the classically trained Worrell began
playing the piano before the age of three, and was a child
prodigy pianist, playing with symphonies and even penning his
own concerto at age eight. He expanded his repertoire in
college, playing with non-classical bands and eventually joining
Funkadelic in 1970, after the release of the band’s first
album. A central P-Funk figure, Worrell helped define the
collective’s sound by providing most of the musical
arrangements and producing most of the later albums. After
P-Funk disbanded in the early 1980s, Worrell played and toured
with the Talking Heads and fellow P-Funk alumnus Bootsy Collins,
and has had a successful solo career.
TIMELINE
March 29, 1940: Raymond Davis was born.
July 22, 1940: George
Clinton, the visionary leader of the Parliament-Funkadelic empire, is
born in Kannapolis, North Carolina.
January 5, 1941: Gene
Grady Thomas was born.
June 8, 1941: Clarence
“Fuzzy” Haskins was born.
May 22, 1942: Calvin “Thang”
Simon was born.
April 19, 1944: Bernie
Worrel was born.
May 23, 1944: Tiki
Fulwood was born.
April 10, 1950: Eddie
Hazel was born.
August 20, 1950: Jerome
Brailey was born.
January 28, 1951: William
“Billy Bass” Nelson Jr. is born.
October 26, 1951: Bootsy
Collins was born.
October 16, 1952: Cordell
“Boogie” Mosson Jr. is born.
July 24, 1953: Gary
Shider was born.
1955: George Clinton
forms the Parliaments with fellow classmates at Clinton Place Junior
High School in Plainfield, New Jersey.
September 2, 1967: “(I
Wanna) Testify,” by the Parliaments, enters the R&B singles chart.
It is a massive R&B hit (#3) that also rises to #20 on the pop Top
Forty. Seven years later it is recut by Parliament (with the s lopped
off) as “Testify.”
1967: “(I Wanna)
Testify” by the Parliaments reaches #20.
1969: The untitled first
album by Funkadelic, including the defining track “Mommy, What’s a
Funkadelic...?,” is released.
1970: ‘Osmium’, the
first album by Parliament, is released.
1971: ‘Maggot Brain’,
the third Funkadelic album, is highlighted by the title track, a
landmark ten-minute guitar solo from Eddie Hazel.
1972: Funkadelic’s most
overtly political album (and only double LP), ‘America Eats Its Young’,
is released.
1974: ‘Up for the
Downstroke’ revives the Parliament name. With overlapping personnel,
Parliament and Funkadelic operate on different but parallel tracks
through the end of the decade.
1975: Parliament releases
the breakthrough album Mothership Connection, whose audacious concept
loosely hinges on the notion that Planet Earth was originally settled by
a tribe of black outer-space aliens who would one day return to liberate
their descendants.
December 27, 1977: ‘Funkentelechy
Vs. the Placebo Syndrome’, another concept album building on the story
line first articulated on ‘Mothership Connection’, enters the
charts. It reaches #13, tying ‘Mothership Connection’ as the
highest-charting Parliament album.
1978: Funkadelic hits #28
with “One Nation Under a Groove”.
January 28, 1978:
Parliament’s “Flash Light,” driven by a synthesized bass line,
enters the R&B chart, which it will top for three weeks. It is a Top
Twenty single on the pop charts as well.
1978: Parliament hits #16
with “Flashlight”.
October 27, 1978:
Funkadelic releases ‘One Nation Under a Groove’. Its anthemic title
track tops the R&B charts for six weeks and is the only Funkadelic
single ever to reach the pop Top Forty.
1978: Glenn Lamont Goins
died.
December 9, 1978:
Parliament’s “Aqua Boogie” enters the R&B charts, which it
will top for four weeks.
August 25, 1979:
Funkadelic’s second biggest hit, “(Not Just) Knee Deep,” enters
the R&B charts, which it will top for three weeks.
November 13, 1982: George
Clinton’s first solo album, ‘Computer Games’, is released. “Atomic
Dog” becomes a huge R&B, club and video hit (though it entirely
misses the pop singles chart).
1983: ‘Urban Dancefloor
Guerrillas’, by the P.Funk All-Stars—an agglomeration that draws
from all corners of the Parliament-Funkadelic empire—appears on the
CBS Associated label.
1983: George Clinton
releases “Atomic Dog”.
1986: George Clinton
releases “Do Fries Go With That Shake”.
1989: ‘The Cinderella
Theory’, George Clinton’s fifth solo album and first for Prince’s
Paisley Park label, is released.
1992: Eddie Hazel died.
January 12, 1993: Sly and
the Family Stone are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the
eighth annual induction dinner, held in Los Angeles. George Clinton is
the presenter.
May 6, 1997: Parliament-Funkadelic
is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the twelfth annual
induction dinner. Prince is their presenter.
GEORGE
CLINTON - LEAD VOCALS, REFEREE
Garry "Starchild" Shider - Rhythm Guitar, vocals
DeWayne "Blackbyrd"McKnight - Lead Guitar
Michael "Kidd Funkadelic" Hampton - Lead Guitar
Cardell "Boogie" Mosson - Rhythm Guitar, Vocals
Ricardo Rouse - Guitar,
Lige Curry - Bass, Vocals
RonKat Spearman - Bass, Vocals
Frankie "Kash" Waddy - Drums
Joseph "Foley" McCreary - Drums
Rico Lewis - Drums
Jerome Rogers - Keyboards
Michael "Clip" Payne - Keyboards, Vocals
Bennie Cowan - Trumpet
Greg Thomas - Saxophone
Robert "P-Nut" Johnson - Vocals
Belita Woods - Vocals
Steve Boyd - Vocals
Kimberly Manning - Vocals
Kendra Foster - Vocals
Shonda "Sativa Diva" Clinton - Rap
Carlos "Sir Nose"McMurray - Dancer
Shaunna Hall - Guitar
Gene "Poo Poo Man" Anderson - Vocals
Danny Bedrosian - Keyboards
Tracey Lewis - Rapper & Vocals & Guitar
Paul Hill - Vocals
Discography 1967
The Parliaments I Wanna Testify
1970 Funkadelic Funkadelic
1970 Funkadelic Free Your Mind...And Your Ass Will Follow
1970 Parliament Osmium
1971 Funkadelic Maggot Brain
1972 Funkadelic America Eats Its Young
1973 Funkadelic Cosmic Slop
1974 Funkadelic Standing on the Verge of Getting It On
1974 Parliament Up for the Down Stroke
1975 Funkadelic Let's Take It to the Stage
1975 Parliament Chocolate City
1976 Funkadelic Hardcore Jollies
1976 Funkadelic Tales of Kidd Funkadelic
1976 Parliament Clones of Dr. Funkenstein
1976 Parliament Mothership Connection
1977 Parliament Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome
1977 Parliament Get Down & Boogie
1977 Parliament Live Earth Tour
1978 Funkadelic One Nation Under a Groove
1978 Parliament Motor Booty Affair
1979 Funkadelic Uncle Jam Wants You
1979 Parliament Gloryhallastoopid
1980 Parliament Trombipulation
1981 Funkadelic The Electric Spanking of War Babies
1982 George Clinton Computer Games
1983 George Clinton You Shouldn't-Nuf Bit Fish
1984 P-Funk Allstars Urban Dancefloor Guerillas
1985 George Clinton Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends
1986 George Clinton R&B Skeletons in the Closet
1989 George Clinton The Cinderella Theory
1993 Sample Some of Disc, Sample Some of DAT Vol. 1
1993 George Clinton Hey Man, Smell My Finger
1994 Sample Some of Disc, Sample Some of DAT 2
1995 Sample Some of Disc, Sample Some of DAT Vol. 3
1995 George Clinton & Family Go Fer Yer Funk
1995 George Clinton & Family P is the Funk
1995 George Clinton & Family Plush Funk
1995 George Clinton & Family Testing Positive 4 The Funk
1995 George Clinton & Family A Fifth of Funk
1996 George Clinton The Awesome Power of a Fully Operation Mothership
1996 George Clinton Greatest Funkin Hits
1997 George Clinton & The P-Funk Allstars Live & Kickin'
1998 George Clinton & P-Funk Allstars Dope Dogs
2000 George Clinton The Best of George Clinton
2002 Parliament Funked Up: The Very Best of Parliament
2003 George Clinton Six Degrees of P-Funk
2004 George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic Instant Live: Portland,
ME
2004 George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic Instant Live: Atlanta,
GA
2005 Parliament Gold
Credit: George Clinton,
Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, PBS Independent Lens, Harlene Freezer,
Yvonne Smith,
Data
compiled from The British Antarctic Study, NASA, Environment Canada,
UNEP, EPA and other sources as stated and credited Researched
by Charles Welch-Updated dailyThis Website is a project of the The
Ozone Hole Inc. a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization
