Billy Bass, the founding bassist for Parliament–Funkadelic whose real name was William Nelson, Jr., died on Saturday. The Facebook account for that group’s frontman, George Clinton, announced the news without providing further details. Nelson was 75.
“Rest in eternal peace and funk,” Clinton’s Facebook account commented.
Nelson, who was born Jan. 28, 1951, was among the group of musicians Clinton befriended while working at a Plainfield, New Jersey barbershop. Eventually, they came together as a doo-wop vocal group, which included a teenaged Nelson, called the Parliaments whose goal was to get signed to Motown. The group released a handful of singles in the late Sixties, the most notable of which, “(I Wanna) Testify,” came out in 1967 and reached Number 20 on the pop chart and Number Three on the R&B chart; their next single, “All Your Goodies Are Gone,” showed the group experimenting with psychedelia.
It was Nelson who suggested that the Parliaments should hire a rhythm section so that they wouldn’t have to rely on house bands while touring, according to Dave Thompson’s Funk book. Nelson, who first played guitar in the group, also recommended hiring guitarist Eddie Hazel, whose “Maggot Brain” guitar solo would later become one of the band’s most celebrated works. Nelson subsequently switched to bass, getting encouragement from James Jamerson, learning to play the instrument on the road. Clinton once described Nelson’s playing style as bearing “the Motown flavor with the aggressive rock attitude,” according to Premier Guitar.
He was also a trailblazer when the band started funkifying their looks with wild costumes. Tired of being called the “baby” of the band, he showed up in a diaper and combat boots to one show.
In 1967, a dispute with their record label, Revilot, led the group to find a new label and a new name since Clinton said Revilot claimed to own the Parliaments. Although they’d later drop the “s,” they first rebranded themselves as Funkadelic, a name Nelson claimed to have come up with.
Nelson played bass on Funkadelic’s first three albums, Funkadelic (1970), Free Your Mind … and Your Ass Will Follow (1970), and Maggot Brain (1971). Nelson, as a Parliaments mainstay, sang lead vocals on at least one song from each album. He also played bass with the group Parliament on that group’s debut album, Osmium (1970), and guitar on its Up for the Down Stroke (1974).
The bassist quit the band over a financial dispute with Clinton, according to Clinton’s website, foreshadowing other musicians’ exits in the future with the same claims. He played with the Temptations for a spell before re-joining P-Funk for their session for “Better by the Pound,” a song that would appear on Let’s Take It to the Stage (1975). He was also credited with “Blackbelt Thumpasauric Bass” on Tales of Kidd Funkadelic (1976). He’d also get further credits on albums by Parliament and Funkadelic through the end of the Seventies.
After leaving again, Nelson played with the Commodores, Fishbone, Jermaine Jackson, Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, and other artists, according to Clinton’s website. He also played on solo albums by P-Funk members including Hazel, Ruth Copeland, and Bernie Worrell, among others.
In the Nineties, Nelson fronted a group called O.G. Funk, which put out a single, “I Wanna Know,” in 1991 and an album, Out of the Dark, in 1994. He re-joined P-Funk that same year. He was among the P-Funk members inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. He also toured with 420 Funk Mob and Sons of F.U.N.K.
When asked to name a few songs off the top of his head for a radio program called The Soul Show to play in 2016, Nelson chose three songs he played on with his friend Eddie Hazel, who died in 1992: Funkadelic’s “Hit It and Quit It” and “Super Stupid,” both off Maggot Brain, and the Temptations’ “Shakey Ground,” off A Song for You. When the interviewer referred to the latter as the Temptations’ “psychedelic soul era,” Nelson corrected him: “Well, Motown called it the ‘Funkadelic Era,'” he said with pride in his voice.
Eric Rojas*
