GEORGE CLINTON
- FUNK -
G'day folks,
George Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and
record producer. He was the principal architect of P-Funk and the
mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and
early 1980s.
Though Clinton was
born in Kannapolis, North Carolina, he truly began his musical development when
his family moved to Central Jersey. This was where Clinton formed the
Parliaments in the early ‘60s. Performing out of the back of his Plainfield
Barbershop, the Parliaments dabbled mostly in Motown and doo-wop fare, hinting
in no way at the radical path that would make George Clinton the Godfather of
Funk.
In 1969, the
Parliaments disbanded, leaving the name under record company ownership. It was
at this point that Clinton was presumably abducted by aliens, intravenously fed
LSD, and returned to Earth in rainbow dreadlocks and a diaper. Naturally, these
factors would make Clinton the preeminent influence (alongside James Brown, of
course) on the future history of funk, rap, hip hop, and rock.
Over the
course of the ’70s, Clinton presided over not one but two units, each of which
helped to define funk at its most schizophrenic. Funkadelic’s gritty
psychedelic soul served as a blueprint both for the conceptual approach to
record-making and the sharp-tongued street journalism that would eventually
shape hip hop at its most innovative. If Funkadelic’s legacy wasn’t enough on
its own, Clinton began to also focus his attention on Parliament in the
mid-‘70s.
Even as Funkadelic was writing the book on psychedelic soul,
Parliament set the mold for grimy, horn-heavy funk. Taken together,
Parliament-Funkadelic created a mind-blowing live experience in which as many
as 50 musicians might crowd the stage with glorious color and noise.
With 1978’s
Funkadelic release, One Nation
Under a Groove, Clinton achieved a masterpiece of confluence, the
moment of greatest mainstream visibility for Funkadelic and the record on which
all the moving parts in the Clinton kingdom came together. One Nation emerged on the
back side of the funk movement, the front side of disco, and as a prelude to
hip hop. This is Clinton’s greatest commercial and political manifesto, calling
for global unity around the impulse to boogie. Clinton solidified his status as
a patron saint of hip hop through his much-celebrated early ‘90s collaborations
with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. Both cite Clinton as a seminal influence.
Today, Clinton
continues to tour off and on with various members of his P-Funk All-Stars and
is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Clancy's comment: Another of the many characters in the music business.
I'm ...
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