James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic
“The power of the one breaks down barriers”
Bootsy Collins, bass player with James Brown, Parliament/Funkadelic and a world renowned solo artist.
Like all good stories about James Brown, it started with somebody (or, in this case, several people) getting fired. In early 1970, James Brown was at the top of his game, he was pushing artistic boundaries and reaching a global audience with his unique brand of high energy funk. But there was a growing problem at the heart of The JB empire: money.
Following the death of Brown’s manager, Ben Bart, in 1968, Brown took full control over his business empire and started diversifying his portfolio through several new avenues. “I don’t want nobody to give me nothing, just open up the door and I’ll get it to myself” was a mantra Brown lived by in this period, publicly aligning himself with the new President, Richard Nixon (for whose inauguration Brown played at in early 1969), and his message of “black capitalism”.
However, Brown’s new ventures started running into issues. One such venture was a fatefully short-lived chain of franchise restaurants, James Brown’s Gold Platter. The idea was to have a black-owned business providing affordable meals to black communities but the delivery was half-baked and more image-focused than business savvy. Brown also founded a company that issued food stamps, with the aim of creating an alternate currency that could be kept in the black community and not be syphoned out, but again the concept suffered from poor delivery.
These and other business exploits drained Brown’s finances and the effects started to be felt in the music. By March 1970, Brown’s backing band, The James Brown Orchestra, had gone without pay for several months. The band was up in arms about the lack of pay and Brown didn’t take any of it. Brown’s sidekick, Bobby Byrd, called up a fresh new band and flew them out to the next stop on the tour.
The Pacemakers were a band of young hopefuls from Cincinnati, featuring brothers Catfish and Bootsy Collins. Brown paraded the youngsters in front of The James Brown Orchestra as a powerplay to his veteran group at the next rehearsal, but this backfired and caused them all to walk there and then. Many of the musicians would eventually return, like trombonist Fred Wesley and saxophonist Maceo Parker, but Brown had to start again. He wasted no time in drilling his fresh new band.
Bootsy Collins: “So when I started with James Brown, he told me to slow down and that I was playing too much. I didn’t understand what he meant, so he started explaining the one. He told me to play that first beat and emphasise that with the drummer.”
After a month the group went into the studio and recorded their first single, “Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine”. Brown was back on the money and this new sound took the music world by storm. The band was dubbed The JB’s and a legendary funk outfit was born. After a year of hard touring, Bootsy Collins eventually left the wing of James Brown, and was picked up by soon-to-be funk behemoth George Clinton in 1972. His vocal group, The Parliaments, were recording groundbreaking albums with their new acid-infused psychedelic rock sound under the name Funkadelic. After returning to The JB’s in the early 1970s, Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker joined George Clinton along with the Brecker brothers in 1975 with the seminal work “Mothership Connection”. The influx of The JB’s transformed Clinton’s already established group into a funk powerhouse (often referred to as P-Funk), with tracks like “Give Up the Funk” and the later released “Flashlight” becoming funk staples. It’s hard to imagine their creation without the influence of James Brown.
