the last book I ever read (Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You? excerpt three

from Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You? by George Clinton with Ben Greenman:

I was cutting hair but sometimes cutting out early to work on records. That was the beginning of a pattern that would pop up over and over again during my life: I was doing real good with hair, making lots of money, but I was putting all that money directly back into records and music. We had other groups we considered our competition, healthy rivals like Sammy Campbell and the Del-Larks. Ray Davis was in that group, and later he came over and sang bass with me. Ronnie Taylor was also in that group: he was really close to me. They released records on Ea-Jay and other labels around the area. We went to play with them in Perth Amboy and New Brunswick and even in New York.

Not only were we writing songs like crazy, but we were trying to keep focused on music in other ways, too. By that time, there was an up-and-coming younger generation of musicians in Plainfield. At first, that scene was centered around the Boyce brothers. Their father, Clarence, had been in the Carnation Jubilee Singers, and their mother had a group, too, called the Plainfield Five. The group included Richard, Frankie, and Jo Jo—Frankie was the middle one, and a real fantastic guitar player. The Boyce brothers played with lots of other boys who later became part of P-Funk: Cordell “Boogie” Mosson, Garry Shider, Eddie Hazel, Bernie Worrell. They were all Plainfield kids, and lots of them came by the barbershop at one time or another. Years later, the Boyces were drafted, and Frankie went to Vietnam and died there. This wasn’t until 1968 or so, but it was still a tremendous blow to everyone we knew.