Ron Ford, George Clinton and Billy "Bass" Nelson of Parliament Funkadelic Photo: Ron Ford/Facebook)
Ron Ford, the “Prophet” of Parliament Funkadelic, died Monday, Dec. 28, family members announced on social media.
He was 67.
Ford co-wrote and sang on dozens of P-Funk songs, including “Pumping It Up,” which was sampled by the Beastie Boys, Beyonce and on Marrs’ “Pump Up The Volume.”
“When I was getting ready to have a concept for an album, I always liked to bounce it off of him because he had the funniest jokes,” said George Clinton, the founder of P-Funk and Ford’s lifelong friend, on Wednesday, Dec. 30. “We would do puns and synonyms about different words, and his version of what we were talking about would come from a street-Harlem-Lennox Avenue analytic perspective. It would penetrate and it would always be funny.”
Ford was a native of Plainfield and he was on the scene when Clinton, then living in Newark, opened a barbershop on Third and Plainfield Avenue in Plainfield in the ‘60s.
What happened at the barbershop would lead to music stardom.
“When I had the barbershop in Plainfield he was one of the first ones to work in the barbershop with me,” Clinton said. “We learned how to do hair, he came to Detroit with me, he was there when I got the job with Jobete (the New York branch of the Motown Records’ publishing company). Everything I did he was right there, he learned how to do it. We called him the bull(blank) detector. He could detect bull(blank) from anybody.”
Ford served as a type of consigliere to Clinton in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
“When I had to differentiate between all the people that was around me, when the (blank) was so big and there was so much money and so much drugs that you couldn’t see all of that,” Clinton said. “Me, all I wanted to do was the spaceship. ‘I’ll fix it up later in life, don’t stop now.’ I didn’t care who was stealing what, but he was the one that the people who were stealing were worried about because he would see them and then he would be in my ear sooner or later.”
Ford, who also wrote and sang for the related P-Funk groups Bootsy’s Rubber Band, Parlet, the Brides of Funkenstein and the P-Funk All-Stars, fell into hard times in the late ‘80s that saw him, his Lydia and their children homeless in Los Angles. They were the subjects of a Whoopi Goldberg “Comic Relief ‘90” segment when the family posed for a portrait as part of a fundraiser for the homeless, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“I’m no longer homeless. My kids have their own rooms. But that’s just us. There are a million more homeless people out there who need the same kind of help we’ve gotten,” Ford said to the paper at the time.
Clinton and Ford eventually reconnected and the Prophet appeared on stage in selected shows with Parliament Funkadelic in recent years. The two also pursued claims on Ford’s behalf to the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, D.C. Clinton has had an ongoing battle with Bridgeport Music Inc., which claims to own the rights to about 170 songs written by Clinton and other members of P-Funk. Clinton says a document giving the company the rights to the music was forged.
“He had a persistence,” said Clinton of Ford. “He hung in there no matter what. He was homeless with a wife and two kids -- he was such a good person.”
Peter Jamestone, a member of the band the Detroit Jewels, was Ford’s friend in Detroit and Los Angeles.
“(Ford) could sing as good as anybody ever when he wanted to, writing was effortless for him and he was an open channel and he gave of himself freely at all times -- even in the hard times,” Jamestone said.
Ford had been in ill health for several years due to liver disease, Clinton said. A Gofundme page called “Proper send off for a great father” has been created by the Ford family to raise funds for the headstone and burial. Clinton has donated half the cost, he said.
“He couldn’t do nothing to stop it (the liver disease) but he was still his jolly self,” said Clinton, who had fished with Ford in recent years. “Everybody’s glad that he’s not suffering but we’re going to miss him. Believe it, we’re going to miss him.”
