George Clinton funks up Rainbow show at Florida State

Funk music legend and recent Grammy Award-winner George Clinton was wearing a stylish black hat and a very big smile when he stepped into a rehearsal hall late Tuesday afternoon at the Florida State College of Music.

The Old Time Music Ensemble, which is best known for playing Appalachian fiddle music and barn-dance tunes, was in the middle of performing a mash-up version of two Clinton songs.

The opening part was a nod to “You Make Me Wanna Cry,” which is a soulful doo-wop song recorded in 1959 when Clinton was with his first group The Parliaments. The second half featured a toe-tapping version of “Big Footin’” from the latter-day Parliament’s “Chocolate City” album that came out in 1975.

The Old Time dancers sang along as they did some tap dancing and a synchronized Do-si-do: “I know what you can do/ Let us lay some funk on you.”

Clinton, 74, joined in with the singing: “Big foot music that will blow your mind/ Big foot music is right on time.”

Who knew there was such a thing as Square Dance Funk?

“No, it’s perfect. I need to learn some dance steps,” Clinton said as students gathered around him with their camera-phones for selfies. “This is going to be nice.”“Is there anything you want us to do different?” ensemble director Aisha Ivey asked Clinton when the surprisingly catchy fusion experiment was over.

Clinton is the musical guest of honor during the 20th Annual Rainbow Concert of World Music on Monday night in Ruby Diamond Concert Hall. One of the highlights of the show will surely be when Clinton and P-Funk keyboardist Danny Bedrosian join FSU’s Balinese gamelan orchestra for a percussive version of Clinton’s signature hit “Atomic Dog” (1982).

“This will definitely be a world first. Heck, there’s not even anything remotely second,” gamelan director and ethnomusicology professor Michael Bakan said in an email. “I think the tonal clash between the Western and Balinese instruments just adds to the juiciness of the funk. I can definitely say that no one will have ever heard anything like this before for the simple reason that there has never been anything quite like this before.”

Dr. Funkenstein will also join Bakan’s fusion band Omnimusica for a reworking of “Funkentelechy” for the concert’s finale. Throughout the the night, Clinton will sit in with the Blues Ensemble for “Qualify & Satisfy,” help out the Rock Ensemble with “Alice in My Fantasies” and, of course, sing along with the Old Time Music Ensemble.

“I’m a big ham,” Clinton said. “I hear the least little bit of funk and won’t be able to stay in my seat. They won’t be able to keep me off the stage.”

The idea for featuring Clinton in the Rainbow show began last spring when Bakan performed in  Bedrosian’s "The Armenian Genocide Centennial Concert: Selected Pieces From Over 3 Millennia of Music" at FSU. The two musicians began to talk.

“Like most good things I've done, it all came about starting with a joke,” Bakan said. “Danny had been to an FSU world music ensemble featuring my two groups: Omnimusica and the Balinese gamelan. He had really been excited about it. We got talking about the FSU world music program and the subject naturally turned to the Rainbow Concert. I said, pretty much as a lark, ‘Hey, we should have you and George be the featured guests next year.’ Much to my surprise, Danny jumped right on it. ‘And now, here we are. I still pinch myself that this is actually happening.”

Built in Detroit

These days, Clinton is honored by colleges, became a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and holds an honorary doctorate degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston, but he got his humble start in the ‘50s as a hairstylist in Plainfield, N.J. His shop, the Black Soap Palace, became a hangout for neighborhood kids during the heyday of doo-wop.

It didn't take long before Clinton formed The Parliaments, a doo-wop group that dressed in matching suits and sported heavily processed hairdos. In 1963, Clinton landed a job as a staff writer for Motown Records and relocated the band to Detroit.

The Detroit scene in the '60s was a crazy quilt of musical styles that included the polished Motown artists, the feral Iggy Pop and the Stooges, shock-rocker Alice Cooper, the politically charged The MC5, the madman Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes and working-class The Bob Seger System.

Clinton fit right in.

"We played all those rock 'n' roll scenes and changed from Parliament to Funkadelic," Clinton said in a 1994 interview with Limelight before he embarked as a star attraction on the Lollapalooza Tour. "We realized then that we didn't have too much competition. So we had time to perfect whatever we were doing, the funk with the jazz overtones, the classical, rock 'n' roll, doo-wop. We put in everything."

The group's flamboyant costumes and funhouse visuals became a trademark. If you dropped in on a Parliament-Funkadelic concert in the '70s, you would see Clinton descend to the stage in a flying saucer (aka The Mothership) and play a four-hour show with band members who went by names such as Sir Nose and Diaperman. Funkadelic created its own mythology.

During the '70s, the Parliament-Funkadelic world churned out a string of classics such as "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)," "Make My Funk the P-Funk," "One Nation Under a Groove," "Cosmic Slop” and “Flashlight.” Nearly all the grooves would be sampled a decade later when rap and hip-hop arrived on the scene. Clinton won a Grammy last month for all his music used for Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp A Butterfly” album.

Cleaning up his act

In 1994, Clinton left the frozen climes of Michigan as a self-described “tax exile” and moved to Tallahassee, where he befriended Scott Carswell, the owner of The Moon nightclub.

The P-Funk All-Stars and Clinton used The Moon as a rehearsal space and concert hall to try out their shows before heading out on the road for national and international tours. He eventually opened a recording studio off Apalachee Parkway. Clinton even rented a home for a while from Carswell near the small town of Monticello in Jefferson County, where Clinton’s multicolored hairdo turned heads at the local IGA.

Taking a page from Tony Bennett, Clinton also began painting original works of art after the move to North Florida. They sell for up to $2,000 per canvas and are collected around the country.

In 2003, Clinton made international headlines when he was arrested while sitting in a car outside a Circle K convenience store on the Apalachee Parkway. He was cuffed for possession of cocaine and paraphernalia charges. The felony charges were later dropped and Clinton pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor paraphernalia violations. He paid fines, performed community service and was placed on probation.

In 2012, Clinton finally quit using cocaine after a medical scare put him in the hospital. Clinton said, during an interview with Limelight in 2014, that the cocaine he was smoking and snorting was cut with so much baking soda that the salt levels caused his leg to swell, as if he had diabetes. He quit cold turkey.

"It might have been harder to quit if the drugs had been better," Clinton said and chuckled.

Since he cleaned up his act, Clinton is full of energy and focused on his music. This week, he was recording with old friend Gary “Mudbone” Cooper at his studio for a new album.

“George is an absolute delight to work with,” Bakan said. “He's in his 70s, but he has the energy of a guy in his 20s or 30s, and he's completely open to all the crazy stuff we're doing with his music here.”

If you go 

What: FSU World Music Ensembles present George Clinton as special guest in the 20th Annual Rainbow Concert

When: 8 p.m. Monday

Where: Ruby Diamond Concert Hall

Cost: $10 general admission and $5 students

Contact: 645-7949