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Start Date: January 28, 2024
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Bootsy? Player of the Year featured two hit singles, "Bootzilla", which went to number one on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles charts, and "Hollywood Squares". The album peaked at number one on the Billboard Soul Album charts for four non-consecutive weeks. The original vinyl version of the album contained a pair of cut out star shaped eyeglasses. It probably stands as the band's most successful album to date. The album introduces Collins' roles as Bootzilla and The Player.
The album was released on Warner Bros. Records on January 20, 1978. At the height of the album's popularity, it competed head to head with Bootsy Collins' mentor George Clinton and his band Parliament, who had released the album Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome just two months earlier.
The album was produced by George Clinton and Bootsy Collins and arranged by "THE PLAYER". The album was reissued in 1990 by Warner/Pioneer of Japan (now Warner Music-Japan), then through WEA International in the mid-1990s and then by Time/Warner in the U.S. in April 1998. Personnel: Bootsy Collins; Gary "Mudd-Bone" Johnson (vocals, drums); Robert "P-Nut" Johnson (vocals); Casper (guitar, drums); Phelps "Catfish" Collins (guitar); Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, Rick Gardner, Richard Griffith (horns); Frankie "Kash" Waddy (drums); Joel "Razor Sharp" Johnson. Bootsy Collins's 1978 solo album, BOOTSY? PLAYER OF THE YEAR, has a title that shows, without bragging, just how essential the bassist/songwriter/producer/all-around creative sparkplug was to George Clinton and the P-Funk empire. For the first time since starting his own project in the P-Funk extended family, Collins seems to have focused intently on his own material, which means that these seven songs lack the occasionally meandering jams that weighed down earlier Bootsy's Rubber Band albums. The grooves here are sharper, but the tempos are also slower, with over half of the record perfecting the deep-groove ballad style that Collins had first experimented with on 1977's "Munchies for Your Love." In particular, the centerpiece track, "May the Force Be with You," makes the listener wonder if Collins and Clinton (a producer on this outing) had been listening to Lee Perry's classic mid-'70s dub sides; a similarly spaced-out feel predominates here and on its extended follow-up, "Very Yes." Although the over-extended P-Funk crew was about to crack up for good, this album features Collins, Clinton, and the rest at the peaks of their powers.
Runout Side A -- A BSK-1-3093 ̷B̷S̷K̷-̷2̷-̷3̷0̷9̷3̷ Lw-1 Az 2 ✲
Runout B -- BSK-2-3093-RE-1 Lw-1 Az 4 ✲