William “Billy Bass” Nelson, the founding bassist for the George Clinton-led funk acid rock collective Parliament-Funkadelic has died at age 75. According to a post from Clinton’s Facebook account, Nelson died on Saturday (Jan. 31) of undisclosed causes. “Rest in eternal peace and Funk,” read the brief statement, which contained no further information on Nelson’s cause of death.
Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Nelson, born William Nelson Jr. on Jan. 28, 1951 in Plainfield, N.J., got his break in music when, as a teenager, he became friendly with Clinton, who was then working in a Jersey barber shop he co-owned, the Silk Palace. While he started out sweeping the floors and dancing for customers according to his official bio on Clinton’s site, Nelson parlayed that friendship into a spot in Clinton’s doo-wop group, the Parliaments, who charted a handful of singles in the late 1960s, including their breakthrough 1967, the snappy soul jam “(I Wanna) Testify,” which ran up to No. 3 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 20 on the pop chart.
That tune and another, the yearning, cinematic “All Your Goodies Are Gone” would both later be packaged on the extended edition of Parliament’s 1974 classic Up For the Down Stroke LP. “Goodies” was the first indication that Clinton and company — whose initial desire was to be signed to the iconic R&B/soul label Motown Records — had a trippier, more experimental vibe in mind.
Though he began his tenure on guitar in the Parliaments, he was the one who suggested the band try out Eddie Hazel, a masterful player whose keening, emotive solo on Funkadelic’s 10-minute epic “Maggot Brain” cemented his legend as one of rock’s premiere guitarists. After the Parliaments lost the rights to their name in a legal dispute with Revilot Records, Clinton repositioned the band as more of a funk-forward group, redubbing them first Funkadelic, then simply Parliament and, eventually, taking on the collective name Parliament-Funkadelic.
While Funkadelic was initially conceived as the backing band for Parliament, the expansive group would go on to release its own string of iconic 1970s albums fusing the then-emerging funk sound with psychedelic rock, soul, gospel and R&B on such beloved songs as “Can You Get To That,” “Hit It and Quit It” and “Loose Booty.”
As they began their outer space journey into sometimes deeply weird, cosmic funk, Parliament also played with dress-up, donning bizarre psychedelic space outfits, with Nelson, the youngest of the crew, pushing back against his spot as the “baby” in the group by famously playing a show in a diaper and combat boots, a look that would later be taken up by other members of the collective.
Nelson performed on Funkadelic’s first three studio albums, 1970s self-titled debut, which opened with the nearly nine-minute acid trip freakout “Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic?,” as well as 1970s’s Free Your Mind… and Your Ass Will Follow. He also appeared on the 1971 landmark Maggot Brain, which swung from the relatively straightforward funk rocker “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks” (with vocals by Nelson) to the James Brown-inspired “Hit It and Quit It” to the nine-minute super freak out acid rock jam “Wars of Armageddon.”
While his steady, thumping bass was a mainstay on Funkadelic albums — a style that would later serve as one of the foundational bedrocks of rapper/producer Dr. Dre’s “G-funk” sound — Nelson also provided backing vocals and managed to slip into the lead singer spot for at least one track on all three of Funkadelic’s first releases. You can hear his vocals on the joyous 8-minute funk burner “Good Old Music” on the band’s debut, as well as “Friday Night, August 14th” and the chaotic “I Wanna Know If it’s Good For You?” on Free Your Mind.
In keeping with the rotating, overlapping nature of P-Funk collective, Nelson also played bass on Parliament’s 1970 debut album, Osmium and guitar on 1974’s Up for the Down Stroke. While his tenure in the P-Funk extended universe was relatively short, Nelson performed alongside the galaxy of A-list musicians Clinton gathered over the years, including guitarist Hazel, keyboardist Bernie Worrell and bassist Booty Collins, among many others.
According to Clinton’s site, Nelson left Funkadelic in 1971 over a financial dispute with Clinton, later teaming up with Hazel to play with the Motown legends the Temptations on their 1975 album A Song For You, which contained the legendary group’s last major chart hit, “Shakey Ground.” He briefly re-joined Funkadelic in the studio that same year to play on the song “Better By the Pound” from the group’s Let’s Take It To the Stage LP. He later played with a variety of R&B, funk and pop acts, including the Commodores, funk godsons Fishbone, Jermaine Jackson, Lionel Richie and Smokey Robinson, among others, as well as on solo albums by P-Funk alumni including Hazel, Worrell and Ruth Copeland.
In 1994, he teamed up with some other P-Funk veterans as O.G.Funk for the album Out of the Dark, a P-Funk style funky rock album that featured Nelson on bass and group vocals alongside keyboardist Worrell and drummer Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey. That same year, Nelson rejoined P-Funk (which were then known as the P-Funk All-Stars, though Clinton was the only remaining original member) and he was among 16 of the group’s members inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame in 1997.
Check out Nelson’s speech at the RRHOF induction below.
