On the left is Burning Spear while on the right is George Clinton.
Burning Spear was born Winston Rodney OD on 1st March 1945 in in Saint Ann’s Bay, Saint Ann, Jamaica. Burning Spear is a Jamaican roots reggae singer, music-maker, community icon, educator and spiritual uplifter. He is a Rastafarian and one of the most influential and long-standing roots artists to emerge from the 1970s. He has won two Grammy Awards for Best Reggae Album; one at the 42nd Grammy Awards in 2000 for Calling Rastafari, and one for 2009’s Jah Is Real. He has been nominated for a total of 12 Grammy Awards. Burning Spear was awarded the Order of Distinction (OD) in the rank of Officer on 15 October 2007 in Jamaica. For nearly four decades and more than 25 albums, Burning Spear has spread the message of Marcus Garvey, promoting self-determination and self-reliance for African descendants throughout his music. He recorded his first two classic albums, Burning Spear and Rocking Time as first he entered into the music industry in Jamaica. After an encounter with the legend Bob Marley expressing his interest in being a musician Bob Marley said to him ‘All right, just check Studio One.’”. Burning Spear as a young man he listened to the R&B, soul and jazz music transmitted by the US radio stations whose broadcasts reached Jamaica. Curtis Mayfield is cited by Burning Spear as a major US musical influence along with James Brown. Burning Spear was deeply influenced as a young man by the views of the political activist Marcus Garvey, especially with regard to the exploration of the themes of Pan-Africanism and self-determination. In 1969, Bob Marley, who was also from Saint Ann, advised Burning Spear to approach Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One label after Burning Spear sought his advice during a casual conversation. Burning Spear was originally a group for Winston Rodney and some other band members. Burning Spear was named after a military award given by Jomo Kenyatta, the first President of an independent Kenya, and including bass singer Rupert Willington. The duo auditioned for Dodd in 1969 which led to the release of their debut single “Door Peep” (the session also included Cedric Brooks on saxophone). They were then joined by tenor Delroy Hinds. The trio recorded several more singles for Dodd, and two albums, before they moved on to work with Jack Ruby in 1975. Their first recording with Ruby, “Marcus Garvey”, was intended as an exclusive track for Ruby’s Ocho Rios–based Hi-Power sound system, but was released as a single, giving them an immediate hit, and was followed by “Slavery Days”. These recordings featured the backing band The Black Disciples, which included Earl “Chinna” Smith, Valentine Chin, Robbie Shakespeare and Leroy Wallace. The group worked with Ruby on their third album, Marcus Garvey (1975), which was immediately successful and led to a deal with Island Records to give the album a wider release. Island remixed and altered the speed of some of the tracks, much to the annoyance of fans and the group, leading Winston Rodney to set up his own Burning Music label for future releases where he would have full control, although further releases followed on Island including Garvey’s Ghost, a dub album, and the Man in the Hills album. In late 1976, Winston Rodney split from both Ruby and group members Willington and Hinds, and from that point on used the name Burning Spear for himself alone. Dry and Heavy followed in 1977, self-produced but still on Island, and with a sizeable following by now in the United Kingdom, he performed in London that year with members of Aswad acting as his backing band for a sold-out show at the Rainbow Theatre, which was recorded and released as the album Live!. Aswad also provided backing on his next studio album, Social Living (1978), which also featured Sly Dunbar and Rico Rodriguez. A dub version of the album, Living Dub (1979), was mixed by Sylvan Morris. His profile was raised further by an appearance in the film Rockers, performing “Jah no Dead”. In 2002, he and his wife, Sonia Rodney who has produced a number of his albums, restarted Burning Music Records, giving him a greater degree of artistic control. Since the mid-1990s, he has been based in Queens in New York City. Burning Spear name is often is mispelled Bernie Spears or Burning Spares.
George Clinton was born on July 22, 1941 in Kannapolis, North Carolina, grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey, and currently resides in Tallahassee, Florida. He is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer. He was the principal architect of P-Funk, the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. George Clinton has been cited as one of the foremost innovators of funk music, along with James Brown and Sly Stone. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, alongside 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. During his teen years George Clinton formed a doo wop group inspired by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers called The Parliaments, while straightening hair at a barber salon in Plainfield. For a period in the 1960s George Clinton was a staff songwriter for Motown. One of their major hit singles was, (“(I Wanna) Testify” in 1967), George Clinton as well as arranging and producing scores of singles on many of the independent Detroit soul music labels, The Parliaments eventually found success under the names Parliament and Funkadelic in the 1970s (see also P-Funk). These two bands combined the elements of musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, Cream, and James Brown while exploring various sounds, technology, and lyricism. George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic dominated diverse music during the 1970s with over 40 R&B hit singles (including three number ones) and three platinum albums.
George Clinton began as as a solo artist in 1982. He is also a notable music producer who works on almost all the albums he performs on, and has produced albums for Bootsy Collins and Red Hot Chili Peppers, among others. Beginning in the early 1980s, George Clinton recorded several nominal solo albums, although all of these records featured contributions from P-Funk’s core musicians. The primary reason for recording under his own name was legal difficulties, due to the complex copyright and trademark issues surrounding the name “Parliament” (primarily) and Polygram’s purchase of that group’s former label Casablanca Records. In 1982, George Clinton signed to Capitol Records under two names: his own (as a solo artist) and as the P-Funk All-Stars, releasing Computer Games under his own name that same year. The single “Loopzilla” hit the Top 20 on the R&B charts, followed by “Atomic Dog”, which reached #1 R&B and #101 on the pop chart. In the next four years, Clinton released three more studio albums (You Shouldn’t-Nuf Bit Fish, Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends, and R&B Skeletons in the Closet) as well as a live album, Mothership Connection (Live from the Summit, Houston, Texas) and charting three singles in the R&B Top 30, “Nubian Nut”, “Last Dance”, and “Do Fries Go with That Shake?”. This period of George Clinton ‘s career was marred by multiple legal problems (resulting in financial difficulties) due to complex royalty and copyright issues, notably with Bridgeport Music, who George Clinton claims fraudulently obtained the copyrights to many of his recordings. George Clinton was alot an actor in the movie House Party (1990) with Kid ‘n Play (Kid and Play) from the scene where Kid played by Christopher Reid ran into a formal party after being chased by the three bullies from Full Force. At the formal party George Clinton the DJ there saw what was going on and intervene by hitting one of the bullies over his head with a musical record (disc) then said “yeah I did it, might cry two tears in a bucket, fu*k it lets take it to the stage”. George Clinton was also known as Dr. Funkenstein. Before he went into music, he worked as a hairdresser. Many people are more familiar with the dance-oriented music of his younger group, Parliament. However the older Funkadelic (who recorded as far back as 1969) was a much grittier heavy funk group that experimented heavily with hard rock, particularly on the album “Maggot Brain.” George Clinton often wears weird outlandish, multi-colored clothes in concerts, frequently accompanied by platform shoes and rainbow streamers in his long hair.
George Clinton and Burning Spear also known as Winston Rodney are famous look alikes. Both men have thick beards with long hair. Both men are dark in skin color and are musically talented ageable men.
