Music the father, music the son

[drwex]

We saw George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic last week. I'm still trying to condense that incredible 2.5 hours into something I can write about. In part, I'm doing that by telling people about it and I'm finding that there are people who have no idea who George Clinton is, what funk is, or how important it was.

In my world, music is history. All music is created by people who've been hearing music since their parents sang them to sleep, since they went to church as children, since they sang in school choruses or on street corners with other kids. The music they grow up with is in their heads when they begin to create their own, and as musicians play together and with and around each other, influences pass back and forth like air. Trying to describe funk I try to explain how it has elements of blues and jazz and rock-and-roll and gospel and soul and scat and Motown, to name a few things. I also try to explain how funk begat disco and influenced rock and more or less directly birthed hip-hop... none of which tells you much about what seeing P-Funk is like, so I'm still working on that.

Some people do this sort of telling for a living, though, and they're way better at it than I am. Here, courtesy of a link in Boingboing, is the story of Stagolee or as I first knew him "Stagger Lee" - a song the Grateful Dead introduced me to in their cover version.

http://www.daveyd.com/historystagolee.html

Comments

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Interesting history. I first heard the Taj Mahal version as a kid, when my parents played it. Then, when I was a freshman in college, I got a copy of Murder Ballads and heard the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds version.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I got the see George Clinton and the P-funk Allstars down at Mohegan Sun a couple years ago. They put on a great show.
People are often very suprized when I mention that I like George Clinton.

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

"...whites are attracted to black music as a means of expressing aspects of themselves they cannot adequately express though music from European roots."

That resonates with me. I grew up with parents who are avid classical music fans as a result of which I have a broad knowledge of but little affection for that genre preferring African-Americans genres such as blues, soul, and especially jazz.

[ceo]

I'm most familiar with the Grateful Dead version, but it doesn't really cover the original story; it tells of Billy's girlfriend setting out for revenge.