Bootsy Collins Artistfacts

October 26, 1951
Bootsy Collins might be the most famous funk bassist in history. But what is funk? Here's how he defines it (as told to Songfacts): "It's making something out of nothing... we used what we had to get whatever we got, and that's what funk is."
Bootsy joined James Brown's band in 1970 when he was just 18 - he was a session musician in Cincinnati when Brown recruited him. He stayed until 1971; you can hear him on Brown's classics "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" and "Super Bad."
Collins has a very distinctive look, with a top hat, rhinestones, and star-shaped glasses to match his star-shaped bass.
After leaving James Brown's band, Bootsy joined George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic collective in 1972. He brought along a key concept that Brown taught him: "The One." Brown told Collins to accent the first beat of every measure, giving the music an unusual groove when the other band members were locked in. This became a key component of the P-Funk sound when Clinton embraced it.
Many of the musicians in Parliament-Funkadelic (including Bernie Worrell, Eddie Hazel and Maceo Parker) got their own solo projects thanks to George Clinton, who liked to spread the funk far and wide. Bootsy's which was called Bootsy's Rubber Band, was the most successful. He had a #1 R&B hit in 1978 with "Bootzilla," a song based on a character he created.
He appears on the 1990 hit "Groove Is in the Heart" by Deee-Lite, but not on bass - his vocal interjections like "hit me" and "astronomical" are peppered into the song. He made some other contributions as well: he's in the music video and recruited horn players Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker to play on it.
Various Bootsy Collins animated films have been made over the years. In 1996 MTV made one where he's called to defend the funk from a corporate raider voiced by Mike Judge, creator of Beavis And Butt-Head and King Of The Hill.
His 1976 slow-cooker "I'd Rather Be With You" has been sampled or interpolated in many songs, most prominently in Childish Gambino's 2016 hit "Redbone," where it supplies the groove.
Bootsy came up with the name Silk Sonic for the Grammy-gobbling duo of Bruno Mars and Anderson Paak. When they started the project, Paak and Mars played Bootsy some songs to get his thoughts. Bootsy ended up supplying their name on the spot and also narrating their album An Evening with Silk Sonic.

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