William Earl Collins—“Bootsy” since babyhood—is a singer, songwriter, and bass player’s bass player known for his starry shades, Afro-Futurist instrument, and bottom-heavy and oh so eclectic riffing. His first band, in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, was the Pacemakers, a proto-funk outfit he and older brother Catfish (real name: Phelps) founded in 1968. In 1970, when James Brown fired his band for failure to get sufficiently down, he recruited the brothers Collins and company to back him as the JBs. That validation impelled the group into the upper reaches of funk royalty, including in 1976 establishing Bootsy’s Rubber Band, a hitmaking operation chugging out on the road under the Parliament Funkadelic aegis. Among the Rubber Band’s highlights was 1978’s lowdown “Bootzilla,” which locked in #1 among soul singles. Collins played in and out of George Clinton’s ever-mutating battalion of beat-makers, working with New Wavers like Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads, jazzmaster Herbie Hancock, Rolling Stone Keith Richards, and ultra-punk Malcolm McLaren. He’s front and center in Deee-Lite’s video for the 1990 hit “Groove Is In the Heart.” In 1994 Collins revived the Rubber Band and later, as if to declare funk’s universality, he veered into Appalachiana with Doc Watson, Del McCoury, and other bluegrass aces, and in 1998 he put out Christmas Is 4 Ever, the first collection in that seasonal niche by a P-Funk stalwart. He announced his retirement in 2019 but has been intermittently but reliably active as a film score composer, video game avatar, and special guest artist in the years since. — Michael Dolan
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