Bernie Worrell’s fantastic All the Woo in the World (1978) wasn’t about his space synths or the type of sound effect freakery he added to Talking Heads. It was more about bass and vocals and, in the case of ‘Woo Together’, something like Bernie’s Funkadelic strings. Dave Van De Pitte provided the string arrangement. The string players were uncredited; perhaps it’s Bernie on a synthesiser, but they sound very realistic.
Bernie trades lines with Junie Morrison, who had an unusual, captivating voice. Junie leans into the weirdness; his lines are alternately snarled, squeaked and abruptly finished (“Goodbye!” to close the first verse). Bernie’s voice is a little more consistent, but no less charming. As was often the case in this period of P-Funk, many of the lyrics are unintelligible.
The chorus is clearer: “We are to Woo together / Why can’t we Woo as one?” Dawn Silva, Sheila Horne, Jeanette MacGruder (The Brides of Funkenstein) and Linda Shider (wife of Garry) handle the chorus, which helps give it a different feel. (Lynn Mabry, an original Bride, had left the group in 1979. She joined Bernie as part of the Talking Heads touring group for Stop Making Sense.) In the background, the bass provides constant variation, switching between staccato notes on each beat, slapping and popping, and then slides in the post-chorus.
The post-chorus’s stop-start strings, which form a call-and-response with the bass, and the “You need a Woo / And I need a Woo” (in the first post-chorus) are like a different song to Bernie and Junie’s verses.
The outro’s “We would just like to mention / At the annual funk convention” could be the basis of a new song, rather than merely taking up 50 seconds. But then in this era, P-Funk had hooks for days. Bernie’s mention of “bump” and “bop” recalls Parliament’s ‘Deep’ from Motor Booty Affair, released the same year.
The Woo concept is unclear, but nonetheless intriguing. George Clinton, who co-wrote all but one of the album's songs and co-produced with Bernie, was the chief conceptual brain in P-Funk. In a 2013 interview, Worrell was asked if he had “different visions for the different projects when they had a different name”. He answered, “I didn’t. That deals with the words and stuff. George’s conceptions. I deal with the music”. But Bernie liked this particular concept enough to name a band The WOO Warriors.
Top image from Discogs.