Glenn Goins (January 2, 1954 – July 29, 1978) – Beautiful Birds (1972)
Before joining Parliament, the incredibly talented singer and guitarist co-wrote this rare soul/gospel funk jam for his first group Bags, produced by Jerry Ragovoy.
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Glenn Goins was a supremely talented singer/songwriter and guitarist and an important member of Parliament during the mid-1970s, when he was in his early twenties. Thought by many to have unlimited potential, he left the P-Funk collective in 1977 to form his own group Quazar, but died tragically shortly after recording their debut album. He was only 24 years old.
Glenn Lamonte Goins was born and raised in Plainfield, New Jersey. His family were gospel musicians, and he and his siblings sang in a youth gospel group. During the mid-sixties, they performed from New York City to Baltimore, and Goins honed his powerful tenor voice with a three-octave range. His early guitar heroes were Jimi Hendrix and Johnny “Guitar” Watson, and he learned to play guitar by ear.
Plainfield was the town where George Clinton had a barbershop and his doo-wop group The Parliaments got their start. In 1964, Clinton hired two Plainfield brothers for his rhythm section, bassist Richard Boyce and James “Frankie” Royce who played guitar. They remained with the band until 1967, when they left and formed their own soul/funk band, originally called the Plainfield Admirations. Frankie was drafted and died in Vietnam in early 1969, but Richard kept the band going. In the early 70s they changed their name to Bags, and a teenage Goins joined as lead guitarist and co-lead vocalist.
They hooked up with Howard Tate’s producer Jerry Ragovoy and he produced one single for them in 1972 on GSF Records, “It’s Heavy” b/w “Don’t Mess With My Baby.” The rockin’ jam “It’s Heavy” was co-written by Ragovoy and Gene Pistilli, and featured Goins on guitar and laying down powerful lead vocals.
The group recorded more material with Ragovoy, but it remained unreleased until 2017. That year, Richard Boyce self-released a CD compilation titled The Plainfield Admirations Into Bags - Evolution Of Our Music Vol. 1, which contained several brilliant tracks by both the Admirations and Bags.
Its masterpiece was the phenomenal, little known, gospel soul/funk jam “Beautiful Birds.” Recorded in 1972 and produced by Ragovoy, it was co-written by Goins, his younger brother Kevin Goins, and Boyce, and featured Glenn on guitar and lead and backing vocals. Boyce played bass, Gary Brunson was on drums, and Richard “Shaidi” Banks was on keyboards, with all three also on backing vocals.
Among the song’s other half-dozen backing vocalists were Carl Hall (who also recorded several singles as a solo artist with Ragovoy), Lou Courtney (a future member of the Fifth Dimension during 1978-79), and “Peanut” (aka Garry) Shider, who joined Parliament-Funkadelic in 1972 and later served as the longtime musical director for the P-Funk All-Stars.
After the CD’s release, “Beautiful Birds” was also issued in 2017 as the B-side on a limited edition 7” put out by New York soul label It’s Soul Time. The slow jam “Hey Girl” was on the A-side, similarly co-written by Glenn and Kevin Goins plus Richard Boyce.
Another highlight was the epic instrumental jam “Feel Like Gettin Down,” recorded in 1976. Co-written by Boyce and keyboardist Gregg Fitz, it included Goins on lead guitar, Boyce on bass, Fitz and Banks on keyboards, Brunson on drums, Clarence Lawrey on trombone, Wally Zelinksy on trumpet, and Darryl Dixon on saxophone, who played the sax solo on Parliament’s 1978 mega-hit “Flash Light.”
In 1974, Shider introduced 20-year old Goins to George Clinton, who invited him to join Parliament later that year. He first appeared on their next album Chocolate City (1975). Goins was featured much more prominently on Mothership Connection, released in late 1975, which was the group’s fourth studio LP and their commercial breakthrough. It went gold and later platinum on the strength of its hit single “Tear the Roof Off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk),” released in April, 1976. The single reached #5 R&B and #15 on the Billboard Hot 100, selling over a million copies. Goins sang lead on two songs including the LP’s superb jam “Handcuffs” which he co-wrote with Clinton and Janet McLaughlin.
He next played on Parliament’s classic albums The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein (1976), on which he co-wrote and sang lead on the stellar gospel-funk closing cut “Funkin’ For Fun,” and Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome (1977).
Goins was also featured on Funkadelic’s mid-seventies albums, and toured extensively with P-Funk during this period. He sang lead on several songs during their live shows, including “Swing Down, Sweet Chariot” off Mothership Connection when he famously called in the Mothership.
One of the last songs he recorded with Parliament was “Bop Gun (Endangered Species)” (1977) from Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome, on which he sang lead, and asked the immortal question, “Where’d you get that funk from?”
In 1977, Goins left Parliament and severed ties with George Clinton. In the P-Funk documentary One Nation Under a Groove, it was alleged that band members discovered they had been shorted what they thought they would be paid at the end of that year’s tour because Clinton deducted the cost of the drugs he had provided them on the road. According to Tom Vickers, P-Funk’s Minister of Information:
“(Goins was) such a powerful vocalist and creative center of Parliament-Funkadelic during their glory days that it was really a shock, and you could feel the air starting to go out of the P-Funk balloon.”
Drummer Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey left with him, and they put together a new funk group called Quazarr with former Bags members including Goins’ younger brother Kevin, Richard “Shaidi” Banks, Darryl Dixon, and Gregg Fitz.
Quazarr set about recording their debut LP at Detroit’s Pac 3 Studios, with Goins producing, arranging, and playing multiple instruments including guitar, drums, and bass. But two labels had expressed interest in signing the band, Arista and Westbound, and both laid claim to the master tapes. Goins was stopped at the Detroit airport and the tapes were seized, then tied up in a court battle. He subsequently chose to abandon them, and re-record the album for Arista using the slightly different band name Quazar.
Arista head Clive Davis thought the multi-talented Goins could be another Sly Stone, and Quazar’s album was only the first of many planned records Davis wanted him to make for the label. Goins was also working on his own debut solo album, to be produced by Bobby Womack.
The self-titled Quazar LP was finished in the late spring of 1978. Standout cuts were the funky love song “Your Lovin' Is Easy,” written solely by Goins; “Savin' My Love For A Rainy Day,“ co-written by Goins and Banks; and the sublime instrumental closing cut “Shades Of Quaze.”
One of the funkiest tracks they laid down was the upbeat jam “Raise,” which didn’t make it onto the album and remained a rare outtake.
The LP’s first single, the stellar jam “Funk 'n' Roll (Dancin’ in the ‘Funkshine’)” was co-written by Goins and Jerome Brailey, and scheduled for release that August.
The previous year, Goins had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. He started feeling ill as the summer of ‘78 dragged on and was admitted to the hospital on July 27, but checked out the next day. On July 29, he developed a high temperature and numbness in his limbs and died soon afterwards at his family’s home in Plainfield, NJ. He was only 24, a musical genius whose life was cut short far too soon.
“Funk 'n' Roll (Dancin’ in the ‘Funkshine’)” became a #11 R&B hit single, and Quazar reached #21 on the R&B album charts.
But without Glenn as their guiding force, the group soon disbanded. In 2020, an hour-long documentary on Quazar was released on YouTube, titled Fly Over Heaven: The Story of Quazar.
Happy Cosmic 70th Birthday to the late great Glenn Goins.
Further info:
Glenn Goins on Facebook
Glenn Goins on SoundCloud
“Who Was Glen Goins?,” by Lakisha Adams, March 9, 2018.
“Arista Records and the P-Funk Multiverse,” excerpt from Looking for the Magic: New York City, the ‘70s and The Rise of Arista Records, by Mitchell Cohen, RockAndRollGlobe.com, August 16, 2022.
#soul #funk #GeorgeClinton #PFunk #Parliament #GlennGoins