walking upstream…
Bootsy Collins
photo: juanbobadilla · public domain ↗Bootsy Collins
sourcesLouder · Wikipedia · Premier Guitar
William "Bootsy" Collins was a Cincinnati teenager playing bass in his brother Catfish's band when James Brown drafted the group wholesale in 1970, rebuilding them into the J.B.'s. Eleven grueling months backing Brown on hits like "Sex Machine" and "Super Bad" taught Collins the discipline of "The One" — anchor the downbeat and anything else is fair game. He carried that lesson into George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic universe and then built his own outlet, Bootsy's Rubber Band, whose late-1970s run turned deep funk into cartoon mythology: a star-shaped bass, mirrored top hat, and a cast of alter egos crowned by the monstrous "Bootzilla." His Mu-Tron-drenched "space bass" made the instrument growl, warble, and sing like a second voice.
the sound in question
1977
Ahh... The Name Is Bootsy, Baby!Bootsy Collins
walk the tributaries ↓
James Brown1960s–70s · Funk / Soul / R&B
James Brown pulled Collins, barely nineteen, out of a style built on ornate, guitar-inflected bass runs and forced him toward restraint, telling him: "Son, just slow down and give me the one... I love all these things you're doing, you're a great bass player, but if you give me that one you can do anything, and everything you want to do." Eleven months in the J.B.'s reset Collins's whole relationship to rhythm: the downbeat wasn't a launching point to decorate, it was the entire argument, and everything else was commentary.
listen: upstream & heresource: Guitar World ↗
1967
Cold SweatJames Brown
1976
I'd Rather Be with YouBootsy Collins
listen forSet "Cold Sweat," the 1967 track that codified Brown's stripped-to-the-bone groove concept, against Bootsy's own "I'd Rather Be with You": both let one emphatic hit on beat one anchor a loose, conversational bassline that never has to rush anywhere because the One is already doing the work.
Jimi Hendrix1960s · Rock / Blues rock / Psychedelic rock
Collins has called Hendrix his "superhero" and described watching him as a young Black musician like seeing God: "He was doing all of what I saw myself as able to do because of him." What he absorbed wasn't guitar vocabulary so much as Hendrix's whole relationship to gear — being, as Collins put it, "gadgetized," using effects to make an instrument talk. Collins found his own version of that idea in the Mu-Tron III envelope filter, which let his bass swoop, growl, and hiccup like a second voice.
listen: upstream & here
1968
Voodoo Child (Slight Return)Jimi Hendrix
1976
Stretchin' Out (In a Rubber Band)Bootsy Collins
listen forCompare the wah-warped, vocal-like guitar cries on "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" to the burbling, pitch-bending bass on "Stretchin' Out (In a Rubber Band)" — in both, the instrument stops sounding plucked and starts sounding like it's speaking.
Larry Graham1970s · Funk / Soul / R&B
Not long after Collins landed in George Clinton's orbit, Larry Graham invited him over to jam. Graham handed him his bass; Collins handed it right back: "Don't even try it. You play the bass, and I'll just watch. He's the ultimate slap machine." Watching Graham's thumb-and-pop technique up close — the percussive "thumpin' and pluckin'" Graham invented to cover for a missing drummer — gave Collins a vocabulary he then exaggerated into his own springier, more cartoonish slap style.
listen: upstream & heresource: Guitar World ↗
1969
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)Larry Graham
1976
PsychoticbumpschoolBootsy Collins
listen forListen to the way Graham's thumb detonates the beat on "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" and then to the elastic, syncopated slap-and-pop runs driving Bootsy's "Psychoticbumpschool" — the same percussive logic, pushed further into showmanship.