ReZoom

Bootsy Collins is a shining example of what's to come from an army of baby boomer music stars with music still coursing in their veins.

A wave of baby boomer music stars – rock, pop, soul and funk legends from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s – are finding that despite turning 50, they still have something seriously cool to say. Just as hip and relevant as when they last stood center stage, these artists are getting rewarded for never turning into nostalgia acts playing endless oldies circuits.

"I just refused to go down like that," Bootsy Collins says emphatically, without a trace of his high-voltage public persona.

Collins was recording with rhythm and blues legends when he was a 15-year-old bass prodigy. At 17, he was touring the world with James Brown. Forty years later, William "Bootsy" Collins is still funky and busier than ever and he personifies the new glut of seasoned stars still producing standout work.

In his star-shaped glasses and Dr. Seuss-style top hats, Collins is one of the most recognizable figures in music. That's him bringing the funk to ESPN's all-star "Monday Night Football" theme. He was in the acclaimed film documentary, "Standing in the Shadows of Motown," and is currently producing a film about his hometown's King label, the Cincinnati record company that launched the career of James Brown – and Bootsy Collins.

At 55, this Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is both Old School and New Cool. He's been in the national spotlight since the mid-‘60s, starting at 15 with sessions at King and tours with "The Twist" creator Hank Ballard. His diamond-studded resume marks him as a founding father of funk, including his teen-aged stint with James Brown, before helping create George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic collective in the early ‘70s. He spent much of the latter part of the ‘70s making hits leading Bootsy's Rubber Band.

Collins has cannily created a brand that would be the envy of any Fortune 500 company. Instantly recognizable the world over (Japan is home to one of his biggest fan bases), he is beloved both by baby boomers who partied to P-Funk in college, as well as a younger generation of alt-rockers and rappers including Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist Flea and rapper Snoop Dogg.

Another Cincinnati resident, Peter Frampton, one of the ‘70s' biggest rock stars, also illustrates this trend. In February, Frampton won Best Pop Instrumental Grammy for his labor-of-love CD "Fingerprints," a mix of rock, blues and French-gypsy jazz guitar.

The iconic road warrior Bob Weir, perhaps the best-shorn of The Grateful Dead, may never run out of gas. It's now more than a decade since Jerry Garcia's death ended the Dead's long, strange trip, but Weir, with new band Ratdog, is still playing new music ... and on Conan O'Brien, no less.

Showing no willingness to fade away now that their "glory years" are behind them, more and more of these boomer stars are proving to have a much longer shelf life than the music stars that came before. One reason why – they cherry-pick their projects.

Collins doesn't base career choices on a project's hipness or commercial potential. He just does what looks like the most fun. And the most unlike anything he's ever done before.

One of his newest projects grew out of that once-in-a-lifetime "Monday Night Football" band. Put together by E Street Band guitarist (and Sopranos star) Steven Van Zant, the group includes Springsteen saxman Clarence Clemons, Collins' P-Funk keyboardist Bernie Worrell, Aerosmith's Joe Perry, Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen, Little Richard, the Roots' ?uestlove, Hank Williams Jr. and Charlie Daniels. After the sessions, Daniels invited Bootsy to play on his remake of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." (Click song title to hear sample. You may need to download a free version of RealPlayer first.)

"That to me is fun," he says with a mile-wide grin. Of course, the most common – and biggest-money offers involve reunions with Clinton, and until his recent death, James Brown. But Collins refuses to relive the past.

"I had to find out how to get back to having fun, and how to get back to being a musician who can play with different people, with anybody. That to me is fun. Not going out and playing with George or with James and that's it. That's what I'm supposed to be doing.

"I don't want to do what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't want to dress the way I'm supposed to be dressing. That don't make sense to me. What makes sense to me is to do something different."

Larry Nager is ReZoom's resident music columnist. A former music critic and editor for daily newspapers in Memphis and Cincinnati, he is also the author of "Memphis Beat."

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