George Clinton revolutionized funk and R&B at large as the mastermind of Parliament and Funkadelic. Versed in gospel, doo wop, and soul, Clinton — a singer, songwriter, bandleader, and master conceptualist — scored his first hit as co-writer and lead vocalist of the Parliaments’ “(I Wanna) Testify” (1967), a fiery if tame precursor to what he and his ever-changing collective unleashed the following decade, highlighted by a clutch of animated and everlasting funk classics that topped the R&B chart. While P-Funk temporarily laid dormant, Clinton went solo with Computer Games (1982), the source of another number one R&B hit, “Atomic Dog,” leading to three additional albums for Capitol and sporadic solo affairs during the following decades with Epic, Paisley Park, and a series of independents. A hip-hop godfather, his P-Funk and solo recordings have been sampled innumerable times, and he has worked in the flesh with many of those whose creativity he has fueled, from Digital Underground and Snoop Dogg to OutKast and Kendrick Lamar. Also the driving force of the unmatched Parliament-Funkadelic live spectacle, Clinton toured relentlessly until 2019, the same year he was handed a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Recording Academy. If there was a Mount Rushmore for funk, Clinton would no doubt be part of the sculpture between the likes of James Brown and Sly Stone. Given that the P-Funk Mothership made its final touchdown at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture, the notion is not all that absurd.
Born in Kannapolis, North Carolina, on July 22, 1941, Clinton became interested in doo wop in the early ’50s while living in Plainfield, New Jersey. In 1955, he formed the Parliaments, a vocal group based out of the back room of a barbershop where he straightened hair. The group debuted in 1959 with “Poor Willy,” released on a subsidiary of ABC. An audition for Motown was unsuccessful, but the Parliaments linked with smaller Detroit labels Golden World and Revilot, and Clinton landed a gig as a staff writer for Motown publishing wing Jobete. Clinton split time between Plainfield and Detroit, owning and operating the Silk Palace hair parlor and grooming the Parliaments back home, while co-writing songs such as an obscure 1966 pop-soul gem titled “I’ll Bet You” — recorded by Golden World artist Theresa Lindsey — and running the short-lived Marton label as an outlet for more of his compositions. The Parliaments reached their apex in 1967 with the Revilot platter “(I Wanna) Testify,” which climbed to number three on Billboard’s R&B chart and number 20 on the pop chart. Clinton was the only Parliaments member at the session, but he consequently reconvened with the group and expanded the lineup with a full band of backing musicians to tour.
A legal dispute with the bankrupt Revilot temporarily prevented the Parliaments from continuing under that name. Clinton renamed the group Funkadelic and seized the opportunity for a makeover, pushing the instrumentalists to the fore and embracing psychedelic rock without losing a grip on gospel, soul, and funk. Shortly thereafter, Clinton used the same lineup to launch Parliament, whose 1970-1972 output for Holland-Dozier-Holland’s Invictus label, amounting to an album and a handful of singles, was often as raucous as Funkadelic’s concurrent wealth of recordings for Westbound, another Detroit-based independent. When Parliament joined up with the more commercially minded Los Angeles label Casablanca, the group became increasingly distinct from Funkadelic (who moved up to major-label Warner Bros.), favoring a slicker sound enhanced by Fred Wesley’s Horny Horns. By the end of the ’70s, Parliament and Funkadelic had a combined 39 charting singles, peaking toward the end of the decade with the number one R&B hits “Flash Light,” “One Nation Under a Groove,” “(Not Just) Knee Deep,” and “Aqua Boogie (A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop).” Seven of their albums through 1979 went either gold or platinum. Clinton’s extended collective had also hatched groups such as U.S. (United Soul), Parlet, and the Brides of Funkenstein, among numerous solo projects, and repurposed a few early Clinton compositions — “I’ll Bet You” and “(I Wanna) Testify” among them — to freakier effect.