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Obituaries
Garry Shider dies
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 18 June 2010
Garry Shider, longtime guitarist and singer with George Clinton’s funk collectives Parliament and Funkadelic, has died after losing a battle with brain and lung cancer. He was 56.
Born in New Jersey, Shider moved to Canada aged sixteen and set up a funk group called United Soul. Clinton, living in Toronto at the time, heard about the new group and took them under his wing, and collaborated with the outfit in the early seventies.
He subsequently invited Shider and his United Soul co-founder Cordell Mosson to join his Parliament/Funkadelic collective, and Shider played a key role in those groups through to their conclusion in the early eighties. He continued to play with Clinton as part of the P-Funk All Stars even after Parliament and Funkadelic had been officially wound up.
When performing alongside Clinton, Shider was known for wearing an oversized ‘loincloth’, a fashion statement which earned him the nickname ‘diaper man’.
His cancer was diagnosed earlier this year. A tribute in the local paper of his home town of Plainfield, New Jersey reads: “He is survived by his wife of 32 years, Linda, and mourned by the city of Plainfield and wherever the language of funk is spoken”.
