From Plainfield to the Motor City

GEORGE GRADUATES FROM JOBETE U

If George Clinton gets to be portrayed by Eddie Murphy in the planned biopic about the P-Funk monarch, who’s going to be cast as Berry Gordy?

For Motown represented a significant part of Clinton’s early career, when he sought to have his vocal group, the Parliaments, signed to a recording contract there. When that didn’t materialise, he switched to developing his songwriting skills under contract to Jobete Music.

***Clinton gets his way in Plainfield (photo: Tanya Breen)***

“That publishing deal taught him the value of copyrights,” Tom Vickers told me recently. “More than any other factor, this was important knowledge that served George well when he became successful.” Vickers should know: he was Clinton’s “minister of information” during the years of Parliament/Funkadelic’s sales and chart hegemony.

First, though, here’s why Clinton has been in the news. Last month, he was recognised by the New Jersey town in which he grew up – Plainfield, where five blocks have now been renamed Parliament Funkadelic Way – and the music room at a school he once attended in nearby Newark was tagged in his honour. Clinton and his band also played a show in the city. Just days later came the announcement that Eddie Murphy is in talks to portray the maestro on celluloid. (Last summer, rapper Wiz Khalifa was identified as another would-be George in the long-in-the-works biopic about Neil Bogart of Casablanca Records, called Spinning Gold. Parliament accrued its biggest hits at the label, including six consecutive R&B Top 10 albums.)

Clinton’s debt to Motown and its music makers was clear in his 2014 memoir, Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You? “My feeling about Smokey was more than love: I studied him,” the P-Funkmaster wrote, adding, “What really got me was the way he worked with different artists, how he could take a group that was already established and elevate them just by attaching them to the right song, or by developing their image in a certain direction. He was a shape-shifter, a magician.”

‘PERFECTION MATTERED’ AT MOTOWN

In 1963, the Parliaments earned an audition at Hitsville, and drove at speed from Plainfield to Detroit. “We were all wearing suits,” recalled Clinton. “That’s how you had to dress when you were going to make an impression at Motown. They were supercool, and we thought we were even supercooler.” The group performed at West Grand for A&R chief Mickey Stevenson (“a couple of our own songs along with a few Motown hits”) but were rejected because of their similarity to acts already on the books.

The Parliaments’ appearance – tall, short and in-between – didn’t help. “That unevenness fucked up the sense of visual perfection,” said Clinton, “and that kind of thing mattered then to Motown, because all kinds of perfection did.” Tom Vickers remembers Clinton putting it more bluntly. “George told me the reason the Parliaments weren’t signed was because, as Berry Gordy had said, ‘You’re too ugly, and we already have the Temptations, so what do we need you for?’ ”

Yet the audition wasn’t a complete bust. “Motown must have heard something in the originals we sang for them,” recalled Clinton, “because they offered me a writing job through Berry’s sister, Loucye Wakefield.” Also signed was Sidney Barnes, who wrote with Clinton and sang in a group known as the Serenaders. This combo even recorded a couple of Barnes/George Kerr songs, “If Your Heart Says Yes” and “I’ll Cry Tomorrow,” produced by Gordy and his second wife, Raynoma (“Miss Ray”) Liles, in mid-1963, and released on Motown’s V.I.P. imprint early the following year.

By then, Ray had moved east to run a New York office for Jobete Music, with Clinton, Barnes and Kerr under her wing. “I was betting that George was going to be our star writer,” she wrote in her autobiography, Berry, Me and Motown, “for he kept churning out smooth, mainstream love songs. He was also producing and putting groups together, as Berry had done.”

“As it turned out,” Clinton reminisced in his memoir, “Ray was a publishing shark – very good at the business, very sharp, earned respect from everybody around.” Except, it seems, from her spouse. The couple had separated, and Gordy declined to keep underwriting Jobete in New York. Raynoma sought to raise cash locally by bootlegging copies of Mary Wells’ chart-topping “My Guy” – and thus incurred the wrath of Motown’s Gotham distributor, Morris Levy. The account of Ray’s arrest by FBI officers is one of the better-known Motown anecdotes, as is the subsequent shutdown of Jobete in New York by company vice president Barney Ales. “The first time I met George was when I threw him out of the Motown offices there,” Ales chuckled in telling me, years later.

REPOSSESSION AND REMAKES

Yet Clinton kept his Detroit connections, going on to work prodigiously for Ed Wingate’s Golden World Records. “I learned every aspect of the business,” he recalled, “from writing and arranging to how to oversee recording sessions to getting the records out to local radio stations.” His output included co-writing and co-producing a number of Golden World gems, including “Can’t Shake It Loose” by Pat Lewis and “I’ll Bet You” by Theresa Lindsey. “Later on, with Funkadelic, we repossessed and remade both of them,” said Clinton. They were also covered, respectively, by Diana Ross & the Supremes and the Jackson 5.

***The autobiography: ain’t nobody like George***

In 1966, Berry Gordy bought Golden World, in a deal which meant Clinton’s copyrights there were absorbed into Jobete. But the writer himself was not – and he took the first steps towards creating the idiosyncratic melding of rock & roll, R&B and rabble-rousing that eventually became Funkadelic/Parliament. “We came out of a Motown tradition that was strictly melodic, with tight hooks, but when that intersected with rock and roll, we started to see the possibility of stretching out that feel to great length, not diluting the song but extending it.”

Tom Vickers endorses that. “George undoubtedly learned about song structure during his Jobete tenure, and I remember we’d have endless conversations about the bridge section in songs and how important an aspect that was to a hit.”

The scintillating success of Clinton’s post-Motown career is well-documented, but he kept the attention of at least one Hitsville hitmaker for a while. “George,” says Vickers, “told me how when Funkadelic switched up and became the dominant part of the act, they would play the 20 Grand and Norman Whitfield would bring a cassette recorder to their gigs, and tape their set. Later, bits and pieces of riffs and jams would turn into parts of Whitfield hits with the Temptations and Undisputed Truth, among others.”

Vickers concludes, “George always mentioned how much he admired Motown and how his goal was to create an empire-cum-situation similar to it – and he always talked about R&B standing for rhythm & business. But while his rhythmic chops were incredible, George’s business acumen was lacking. He was too much of a free spirit to be confined by what he considered boring: lawyers, accountants and the intricacies of business. Thus, he was flim-flammed by any number of street hustlers, drug dealers and more.”

Plenty of lively casting opportunities, then, in the movie of George Clinton’s funk-filled life.

Music notes: the first 15 years of Clinton’s recorded-music legacy offer an intriguing listen, including the tracks on this latest West Grand Blog playlist. “Lonely Island” dates from 1960 and is thought to be the Parliaments’ second single, from when they were essentially a doowop act. Tamala Lewis’ “You Won’t Say Nothing” was a Clinton co-write from 1963, the same year that the Serenaders’ Motown track was put down on tape. Also in the playlist are the originals of “Can’t Shake It Loose” and “I’ll Bet You,” together with the Hitsville remakes, plus Parliament’s first 45 on Invictus Records, “I Call My Baby Pussycat” (the band was billed as “A Parliament Thang” on the label copy). The closer is their 1974 makeover of their first hit, “(I Wanna) Testify.” Missing in action is “I Misjudged You,” which the Parliaments reportedly recorded at Motown, perhaps as a demo. The song was registered as a Jobete copyright early in 1964.