More Family P-Funk

Mallia Franklin featuring Junie Morrison – Buzzards

A tribute post to two great members of the P-Funk family – George Everett Clinton Jr. (aka Georgie aka George Clinton III), and Mallia Franklin.

George Everett Clinton Jr. – George Clinton’s son – I knew well from time I spent with P-Funk in the mid to late nineties, some people call him Georgie C. George Clinton’s children like Georgie, Barbarella, Sean, and also the infamous TreyLewd (Tracy) – http://www.myspace.com/treylewd – always have looked out for me like I am a member of the Clinton family. Such beautiful people.

I remember Georgie’s wide smile, and constant lectures at me, as I was a young buck at the time. Georgie’s got plenty of his own music, and I know there’s more to come out – you can check his group out here on MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/gc3andpfunkfamily.

Georgie – you are sorely missed. Prayers go out to the entire Clinton family, George Sr., and especially George Jr.’s daughter, the talented rapper and vocalist Sativa Diva – seen on stage with P-Funk quite a bit, who I urge you to earpeep over here - http://www.myspace.com/sativadiva

Rest in P-Funk, Georgie.

Unfortunately the news came down Monday, after George had celebrated a really successful 2010 Grammys. I’ll get more to the Grammy performance in a minute.

Later in the week, on February 5th, the amazing Mallia Franklin, a long time member of Parliament / Funkadelic, also passed on after suffering for a quite a while in ill health. For heads who don’t know, she’s the lady who put two and two together in the early 1970’s and said hey George, you gotta check out Bootsy, and vice a versa. Without her urging to get the two linked up, who knows if the P-Funk union would have ever gotten as strong as it needed to be.

Mallia recorded an album in the early 80’s with luminary members P-Funk of such as Eddie Hazel, Garry Shider, Junie Morrison, Richard ‘Kush’ Griffith (who we’ve written about here on Earfuzz a few times). The album is called Funken Tersepter (read review / credits here) – it only surfaced as a rare Japanese import in 1995.

I am a HUGE fan of Ohio Players original member Junie Morrison, and his solo work. As you likely know Junie’s solo records on Westbound are epic (like check the vocoder laden Super J (can’t find it on Youtube) or Suzie Thundertussy)!

Well, Mallia also helped bring Junie to the P-Funk camp in the late 70’s – around 77/78, I believe. Again, she’s a keystone connector for P-Funk.

At the top of the post, I’m including a jam off this hard to find import, ‘Buzzards’, which has Junie totally rocking out with his trademark synth riffs from ‘Knee Deep’ – he penned the jam too, and provides the buzzardly raptastic skeezoid character hitting on the women here in this song. ‘Buzzards’ – you know the song is about the dudes at the club creeping up on you ladies Jersey Shore style.

Also, right here on YouTube is another amazing jam from the record ‘Rat-A-Tat-Tat‘ – P-Funk’s legendary guitarist Eddie Hazel just rips through the entire song! Then you get the Horny Horns! Including Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, Richard “Kush” Griffith – there’s a great horn break down at 2:25 in, followed by an Eddie solo right after it! Jerry Jones is the drummer credited, I don’t know anything about him, but his blaps and fills just hit here. Check ‘Rat-A-Tat-Tat’ right here!

Besides her solo work with P-Funk, Mallia Franklin was a member of Parlet, one of P-Funk’s two female groups, the other being the Brides of Funkenstein. Mallia talks here about how she got started in Parlet.

According album credits, Mallia didn’t go beyond the 1st Parlet album, ‘The Pleasure Principle’, but she’s been around P-Funk forever and never left. However, I think she is on the follow up Parlet records though. This is a great re-do of P-Funk’s Fuzzy Haskins’ ‘Cookie Jar’ for that same 1978 Parlet album, and you can hear Mallia shine through on the vocal solos right in here.

Anyways, Mallia has a site up on the web you should visit – http://www.malliafranklin.com/ – and for some reason I can’t copy and past her bio up in here – so please read it. You’ll dig much deeper into the history of her importance in the P-Funk story, and work with other artists.

Rest in P-Funk Mallia, thanks for the funk!

So yeah, a bummer of a week for the funk, but it was preceeded by a whole lot of optimistic funking for 2010.

The Friday following the week, I did make it down from San Francisco to see George Clinton & P-Funk rock it at the Friends and Family / Rock the Vote Pre-Grammy Party. I mean, talk about Funkentelechy! I was driving around Hollywood trying to figure out what in the heck was going on – I had been in LA on work stuff, not really as some Grammy star or anything like that. I got a call from George’s manager Carlon Scott, to come through The Roosevelt Hotel. I made it there just in time to sync up with George and then the rest of the family. Like JUST IN THE NICK of time. I joined the amazing TreyLewd, George’s son, who I’ve collaborated with over the years.

TreyLewd was joined by his son (of course George Clinton’s funky grandson too!) Trafael Lewis. For heads who don’t know, Trafael is having a successful run as the band leader of God’s Weapon, an LA based rock and metal band. I hear they’ve been selling out the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles. Check them out here – http://www.myspace.com/godsweapon

I admit I missed Mayer Hawthorne and Estelle perform at this Pre-Grammy jam on the Paramount studios lot. I was too hung up in the midst of catching up with the P-Funk family. In order for giant bands like P-Funk to make things happen in the days where two guys with laptops can show up for gigs and get the same money (not knocking it, but saying right?), George relies on his network of musicians he’s created over the years in local places, so travel costs can be kept down etc. instead of flying everybody around.

So this LA band George had pulled together was lean and mean : the talented Foley on drums, Amp Fiddler was handling bass synth, Greg Thomas (usually a horn man) and Donnie West on keys (Donnie is from Sly Stone’s latest group), TreyLewd and Ricky Rouse on guitars. On vocals, you had the souful Steve Boyd handling leads with George, Frankie Kash Waddy, Kim Manning, Diane Gordon and the talented Val Young along with Trafael. I had never really been aware of Val Young before (bio here), but man when I went digging for her Rick James produced records, I was quite pleased. Apparently, Val is also an original Brides of Funkenstein member. Check out ‘Mind Games’ from Val Young’s first solo LP, ‘Seduction’:

I’m looking for a real review of this Pre-Grammy show – but it was a lean mean set. I mean they came in with ‘Cosmic Slop’!?! That sounded like such an epic start considering we had just had the fluff of Estelle’s ‘American Boy’ about 20 minutes earlier. ‘Flashlight’ and ‘One Nation’ followed. I do really think it was a 4 song set from what I remember, tight, and uber danceable.

I got in there myself for ‘Atomic Dog’ – yerp. I mean I didn’t bring my Flip Video camera! Again, this was like a last minute into the jam for me! Oh well… I mean, I thought in this world of Flickr + YouTube, that I would be able to find more pictures and videos of this!

George was on point at the Grammy’s before all the unfortunate news came down this week .. I know they got some shots of him happy in the audience watching T-Pain’s performance. Here are a few interviews with George from the red carpet.

George with Nick Cannon on Haiti and Sly Stone …

George talks about the show, and who he’s excited to see perform ..