Posted on 02/22/2014 10:30:04 PM PST by lee martell
I came across a Free Republic article about George Clinton tonight, and I thought about the music he helped to make popular. George Clinton was the Mastermind of the bands Parliament and the Funkadelics during the 1970's and early 1980's. George launched a solo career in 1981. He has been seen a one of the foremost innovators of funk music, along with James Brown and Sly Stone. George was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 with fifteen other Parliament-Funkadelic members. George came from extremely humble beginnings; having been born in an outside toilet. He grew up in New Jersey and formed a doo wop group inspired by Frankie Lymon $ the Teenagers. There was a short stint with Motown as a songwriting team member ("I Wanna Testify" in 1967). The Parliaments eventually found success by combining the elements of Jimi Hendrix, Sly, and Cream, then combining the new technology for sound production. Some of his hits include Flashlight, Atomic Dog and Loopzilla, followed later by "Do Fries Go With That Shake?". A key band member was Bernie Worrell Jr., now 69 years old. Bernie learned to play the piano by age three, wrote a concerto at the age of eight and studied at Julliard in New England's Conservatory of Music. Bernie created Parliament's distinctive riffs with a Minimoog synthsizer. Bernie later performed and toured in the 1980's with the group The Talking Heads.
The days of funk music being on top have long gone, replaced by a rougher, more blunted type of communication. Yet, at 72, George is still in demand as an entertainer and bandleader. Willie Nelson is a similar case of timeless appeal, albeit for very different music.
I recall the first summer I began hearing that term 'funk'. It was in 1971, when James Brown came out with a song written for a type of clothing "Hot Pants (She's Got To Use What She's Got To Get What She Wants)" This was an ode to the Hot Pants or very short shorts the band had seen during their European tour. Most parents did not want their kids using that term Funk, because it was seen as 'a gateway to cursing'. Popular musicians certainly do learn from each other. The same brass and horn phrasings I heard from James Brown, could be heard three years later by Led Zepplin in the Houses of the Holy. This strength and building energy can be heard in many of their pieces, especially "The Crunge".
Hmmm.. All this time, I thought the word,funky was chosen because it rhymed with monkey..
Actually, as Mike Allen has shown in his work, “soul” music and rock has a heavy strain of Scots/Irish folk tunes in it. The notion that it’s “all black music” is just silly.
As one of the best guitarists in the world today, anything with JB in it HAS to be good, even though he usually plays blues-rock and other variants. This RCFP stuff is not really my cup of tea, but some of the tracks are still really good.
For instance, check out this Rock Candy Funk Party video of Octopus "E" on youtube from a recently released CD. In fact, RCFP played on the Conan O'Brien show just last week, including a rare TV appearance by JB. There's quite a bit of RCFP on youtube of late.
Thanks for introducing me to Mingo Fishtrap. I’ve never heard of them before now, and they have been around since the 1990s. At least we have one good legacy band now active and making music. It’s quite a big group of people, men and women.
Thanks for adding a little Rock Candy to our musical diet. I like many kinds of music when done well and with style. I think one of the best features of most Funky music is that the music makes you feel good and the rhythm is usually very easy to walk into. It is similar to but in many ways the exact opposite from The Blues, which is meant to be ponderous, lugubrious and introspective. Each style serves a purpose, as parts of a musical wardrobe.
Funk is an old word meaning smells, or an earthy scent. It also was used to describe a persons B O.
It got its music flavor in the numerous juke joints of Southern blacks, especially when some musicians where also running booze during prohibition, coming in from their booze runs to play, smelling all funky, while jukin an rockin.
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