Everything Is on the One: Parliament's Clones of Dr. Funkenstein at 50
Fifty years ago, on 20 September 1976, Parliament released The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein on Casablanca. It reached number three on the R&B albums chart, made the pop top 20 and became the band's second gold record. It's also one of the best ways into the most tangled family tree in funk.
Two bands, one crew
Parliament started life as The Parliaments, a doo-wop group George Clinton led out of a barbershop in Plainfield, New Jersey, in the late 1950s. In the late 1960s, a contract dispute with their label, Revilot, cost Clinton the use of the name. So he signed the same musicians to Westbound Records under a new one: Funkadelic. In 1970 he revived the singing group as Parliament, and from 1974 it had a home at Casablanca.
That left Clinton running two bands with largely the same people. Funkadelic was the loud, guitar-led, psychedelic side. Parliament was the horn-driven side, built around vocal arrangements, science-fiction concepts and increasingly elaborate studio productions. Fans call the whole operation P-Funk.
The busiest year
1976 shows how far Clinton pushed the arrangement. In April, the P-Funk Earth Tour opened in Nashville, with a spaceship landing on stage each night to sell the previous album, Mothership Connection. In September, mid-tour, Parliament released Clones. That same month Funkadelic put out Tales of Kidd Funkadelic, its last album for Westbound, and in October came Hardcore Jollies, its first for Warner Bros. That's three albums in about six weeks, on three labels, from one extended crew.
The record
Clones picks up the story from Mothership Connection: Starchild has brought the funk to Earth, and now Dr. Funkenstein's clones are meant to spread it. You don't need to follow the mythology to enjoy the album. What matters is the playing. The horn arrangements, by trombonist Fred Wesley with keyboardist Bernie Worrell, are tighter and jazzier than on earlier Parliament records, and Bootsy Collins's bass carries the whole thing.
Both Wesley and Collins had passed through James Brown's band before becoming key figures in the P-Funk universe, and they brought Brown's central rule with them. It even has a song title on the album: "Everything Is on the One."
On the one
When Bootsy joined Brown in the early 1970s, Brown taught him that the bass has to land on the first beat of every bar. As Bootsy tells it, Brown's deal was simple: "you give me the one, you can do all those other things." Hit the one, and everything else is free.
P-Funk turned that into a philosophy, and Clones is a good record to hear it on. Put on "Everything Is on the One" or "Do That Stuff," count to four, and listen to where things land. The horns, bass, keys and voices all wander off, but they come home together on beat one. That's how a band this big can sound loose and locked in at the same time.
That pocket had a long afterlife. "Do That Stuff" turned up in Nice & Smooth's "Funky for You" in 1989, one of countless P-Funk grooves that hip-hop producers built on.
Where to go next
If Clones clicks, here's how to follow the family tree through what's in the shop:
- Funkadelic, Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow (1970): the other band, at its rawest and strangest.
- Funkadelic, One Nation Under a Groove (1978): Funkadelic on Warner Bros., and the point where the two sides of P-Funk sound closest.
- Bootsy's Rubber Band, This Boot Is Made for Fonk-n (1979): Bootsy's own spin-off, in a 1979 pressing.
- George Clinton, Computer Games (1982): Clinton solo, and the home of "Atomic Dog."
Put it on
We have Clones on vinyl, reissued by BGP. Drop the needle on side two, find beat one, and let everything else wander around it. Fifty years on, that's still the whole lesson. Find the one, and even the wildest P-Funk record starts to make sense.