Keyboard player extraordinaire for P-Funk and Talking Heads.
I had heard of his passing from an electronic music mailing list but did not realize that he lived about 15 miles away from here - from The Bellingham Herald:
Bernie Worrell, masterful P-Funk keyboardist, dies in Everson
Bernie Worrell, the ingenious “Wizard of Woo” whose amazing array of keyboard sounds and textures helped define the Parliament-Funkadelic musical empire and influenced performers of funk, rock, hip-hop and other genres, has died.
Worrell, who announced early this year that he had stage-four lung cancer, died Friday at age 72. He died at his home in Everson, according to his wife, Judie Worrell.
A bit more:
Worrell was among the first musicians to use a Moog synthesizer, and his mastery brought comparisons to Jimi Hendrix’s innovations on guitar. Anything seemed possible when he was on keyboards, conjuring squiggles, squirts, stutters and hiccups on Parliament’s “Flash Light” that sounded like funk as if conceived by Martians. On Funkadelic’s “Atmosphere,” his chatty organ prelude, like a mash-up of Bach and “The Munsters,” set up some of Clinton’s more unprintable lyrics.
He was an original - will be missed.
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