Biography & Musical Career
Willam Earl Collins aka Bootsy Collins was born October 26, 1951, (age 67). He is from Cincinnati, Ohio. He is known as an a funk bass player and famous singer songwriter.
Bootsy was apart of Parliament-Funkadelic with Georgia Clinton and Bernie Worrell. He is known as one of the artist that founded the P-funk sound created in this group.
He is also known for writing some of James Brown’s songs in the late 60s early 70’s with his brother Phelps ‘catfish’ Collins. Along with his brother, Kash Waddy and Philippé Wynne, Collins formed a group called The Pacesetters in 1968.
In March 1970, the Pacesetters became James Brown’s band and played many of brown’s most popular and well known funk songs. For example, “Get Up Sex Machine”, “Super Bad”, “Soul Power”, and “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing”
After his time with Brown, Collins went back home to Ohio and created a new band called ‘House Guests’ with his brother Phelps, Rufus Allen, Clayton “Chicken” Gunnels, Frank Waddy, Ronnie Greenaway and Robert McCullough. The group released two singles.
Shortly after both Collins brothers joined Funkadelic and played on the album titled, ‘America Eats Its Young’. Bootsy got his big break when he appeared in Funkadelic’s ‘Let’s Take It To The Stage’ and Parliament’s ‘Up For The Down Stroke. He got his credit for for both sound and song writing.
In 1976 Bootsy, Catfish, Waddy, Joel Johnson, Gary “Mudbone” Cooper, Robert Johnson and The Horny Horns formed Bootsy’s Rubber Band. The group recorded four albums. One of the albums titled ‘Boosty? Player of the year’ reached the top of the charts in albums and the single ‘Bootzilla’ became a number one single.
Bootsy in his musical career created many alter egos, for example, “Casper the Funky Ghost” to Bootzilla, “the world’s only rhinestone rockstar monster of a doll”.
During the rest of his career he collaborated with more artists from the 1980’s and continued through 2008.
Over those years Bootsy worked with additional artists, Jerry Harrison, Deee-Lite, Del McCoury, Doc Watson and Mac Wiseman, Georgia Clinton, Bernie Worrell, Bill Laswell, Victor Wooten.
