Billy Bass Nelson Tribute 2021

Billy Bass Nelson is a living legend from Plainfield, New Jersey, USA the home of the P-Funk ; member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Grammy Legends Award Winner.

Billy Bass is a brother to FSQ’s Chuck Da Fonk for 25+ years and an important collaborator with FSQ for about 10 years, with his most recent collaboration being on our “Reprise Tonight” album (Soul Clap Records, 2020).

This page is dedicated to Billy’s triumphant music career. His Wikipedia is here, but let us give you our perspective and in this post are playlists and radio episodes from The Face Radio dedicated to Billy Bass Nelson.

Billy began his music career as a bass player in the late 1960s with The Parliaments, recording in Detroit for their early singles like “Testify” and “All Your Goodies Are Gone”. At about this time the backing group for the vocalists known as The Parliaments, became Funkadelic and began releasing psychedelic blues heavy funk with the Westbound Records label. Parliament also released a 1970 LP with Invictus Records that prominently featured the Funkadelic band behind the vocalists formerly known as “The Parliaments”. The two groups and various off shoots of course became known as “Parliament-Funkadelic” or for short “P-Funk”.

Funkadelic’s first 3 LPs - “Funkadelic”, “Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow”, “Maggot Brain” prominently featured Billy on both bass and also vocals.

While Billy moved on in to become a highly sought after session bass player for Motown Records, he continued to contribute to the music of the P-Funk empire. We’ve created a 5 hour playlist to showcase Billy’s work across the P-Funk and Motown empires.

Billy remains active today and working with FSQ, and our brothers Soul Clap. Before the pandemic, he was touring with a group known as The Funk Experience. In terms of his work with FSQ, Billy contributes bass and guitar to our FSQ remix productions for artists such as Life on Planets, Nick Monaco, Lonely C (Charles Levine of Soul Clap), and Kraak & Smaak. The playlist also features Billy’s modern funk work with these artists.

(Playlist follows and Please Continue Reading)

FSQ’s 5 HOUR BILLY BASS TRIBUTE PLAYLIST via Spotify

In terms of Billy Bass Nelson’s Motown Records work (and other mid 70s West Coast artists) - he can be found playing on hit records by The Commodores, The Temptations, Lenny Williams, Smokey Robinson, Jermaine Jackson, Alton McClain & Destiny, Chairmen of The Board to name a few artists.

FSQ also produced a radio tribute to Billy Bass Nelson in summer of 2020 which can be enjoyed here.

Here’s another tribute mix to Billy Bass Nelson made by our friend and P-Funk drummer Gabe Gonzalez