There’s more to George Clinton than many fans realize. The Kannapolis, NC-born musician is the voice and face of Parliament Funkadelic. A leading light of the music scene, Clinton brought a sensibility that—much like Frank Zappa, to whom he is often compared—combined humor with advanced musicality. Through the 1970s and ’80s, the music made by the various aggregations under the P-Funk banner delighted fans who wanted something beyond the ordinary. The space-themed outfits, high-energy and outrageous live shows won Clinton and his band mates a loyal following that continues to this day.

But Clinton didn’t appear out of nowhere. By the time Funkadelic began attracting critical attention with albums like 1970’s Free Your Mind … And Your Ass Will Follow, he had been working as a professional musician for several years. With his friend Sidney Barnes (the latter a member of another groundbreaking musical act, Rotary Connection), Clinton worked as a staff songwriter at Motown. “We wrote a hundred-and-something songs in the Jobete Records catalog over the course of a year,” Barnes recalls. At the same time, Clinton also produced many sessions for fledgling artists, honing his skills behind the recording console.

In the middle 1960s, Motown head Berry Gordy set up a New York office for the company, headed by his estranged wife Raynoma. Barnes says he and Clinton “recorded hundreds of demos of songs—our songs, other people’s songs—because everybody at that time was interested in getting a Motown song.”

Even at the height of Parliament Funkadelic’s success, Clinton was actively helping other artists. During the ’70s he worked again with Barnes and Mike Terry (billing themselves as Geo-Si-Mik Productions) at Golden World Records, working on sessions for Edwin Starr, including “Agent Double-O Soul” and “Stop Her on Sight.”

While today Clinton and his P-Funk projects are thought of primarily as live acts, all of those experiences in the studio sharpened Clinton’s approach to music. In recognition of his life of achievement, Clinton was inducted (with Parliament Funkadelic) into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1997; just over a decade later, his home state recognized him as well, inducting him into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. Today, as he approaches his retirement from live performance, Clinton remains active; behind the scenes he has been working with Barnes on development of a docudrama focusing on the chitlin’ circuit of the mid-20th century.

George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic
Aug 3, 5:30p.m. $79.50 and up
Mountain Winery, Saratoga

Maceo Parker has played with some of the most iconic and eccentric personalities in music history. As James Brown’s sax man, he helped write the rules of modern R&B. As the musical director of George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic, he led a sonic revolution in the ’70s. As part of Prince’s band, he’s helped him become one of the most in-demand live acts of this century. He’s worked on projects with everyone from Keith Richards to Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction.

The question is: how does he do it? How does he collaborate with pop’s oversized personalities without setting off a war of egos?

Duh, he’s Maceo.

“I’m easygoing,” said Parker by phone after winding up his extended New Year’s Eve duties. “I’ve got a real long, long, long, long chain before you get me out of my thing. I’m just one of those guys, I’ll open the door for you, you can go in the elevator first. If there’s a long line of cars, I’ll stop and let you in. I just do that.”

If Parker’s cool runs deep, it has also spread wide. “One of the things I never envisioned really is so many parents naming their kids Maceo,” he says. “Man, all over the world, I’m telling you. It’s crazy, really crazy. There was one time I had three little Maceos on stage. One of the left side of the stage, one in the center, one on the right. None of them knew each other, but they were all Maceo because of me.”

Parker has been recording with his own various bands off and on since the early 70s, winning a “Jammie” for Best Jazz Album in 2009 for his most recent album, the Ray Charles tribute Roots & Grooves.

When he comes to Montalvo in Saratoga on Wednesday, he brings a reputation for transcendent live shows that can stretch on for hours. He’s so known for epic partying he had to do four straight nights through New Year’s Eve last month, at Yoshi’s in San Francisco.

“People know what we’re going to bring, they know what we do. You’re going to get your party on, your dance on. That’s what we’re about,” says Parker. “I’m there for the people. They made a choice to come where I am, and I want to make it really worth their while. I’m there trying to give one hundred percent.”

It’s a work ethic that was certainly impressed upon him at a young age; he was only 21 when he started playing with Brown in the ’60s. Though the soul and funk icon was a careful arranger, he also relied on his legendary sidemen like Parker and trombonist Fred Wesley to keep his sound cutting-edge.

“When it came to ‘Maceo, time for you to blow,’ then I had to play what I hear, which is what is inside of me,” he remembers. “It was exciting, it was a little challenging. But then again, it wasn’t that much, because I was just playing me. Fred used to say ‘Man, I never seen anybody wake up out of a deep sleep and play as funky as Maceo.’ It’s all natural.”

It was a bit of a culture shock when he hooked up with Clinton’s spaced-out, psychedelic P-Funk crew, but he quickly made his mark.

“I really cherish the time I was with him. It was like a cult kind of thing, the following. It was cool, but coming from James Brown it was like ‘Whoa! Whoa! No, you can’t say that! No, you can’t do that! You can’t dress like that! You have to wear some kind of shoes. C’mon!’ I’m telling you, man, I was really thrown. Like, ‘what in the world is going on?’”

Parker has drawn from all of those experiences, but when he got the chance to set his own musical agenda, he discovered as a bandleader that the sound he really wanted to channel wasn’t so different from the one he had started out with in the first place.

“I’ve always had my concept of how I want to do it. It sort of resembles James Brown a little bit, because let’s face it, that turned out to be me, too,” he says. “It was James Brown, but it was also me.”

Rather than end up what he calls a “jack of all trades, master of none, “ he pushed his funk-based sound as hard and far as he could.

“That’s what I set out to do, and that’s what I did,” he said. “I guess it shows.”

Maceo Parker plays Wednesday, Jan. 11, at Montalvo Arts Center at 7:30pm; $44/$49.