About Eddie Hazel
Edward Earl Hazel was an American guitarist and singer in early funk music who played lead guitar with Parliament-Funkadelic. Hazel was a posthumous inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1997 with fifteen other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. His ten-minute guitar solo in the Funkadelic song "Maggot Brain" is regarded as "one of the greatest solos of all time on any instrument". In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Hazel at no. 29 in its list of 250 of the greatest guitarists of all time. His mother at first vetoed the idea, since Hazel was only seventeen, but Clinton and Nelson worked together to change her mind. Funkadelic (1970), Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow (1970) and Maggot Brain (1971) were the first three albums, released within two years. At age 12, Hazel met Billy "Bass" Nelson, and the pair quickly became close friends and began performing, soon adding drummer Harvey McGee to the mix. In 1967, the Parliaments, a Plainfield-based doo wop band headed by George Clinton, had a hit record with "(I Wanna) Testify." Clinton recruited a backing band for a tour, hiring Nelson as bassist, who in turn recommended Hazel as guitarist.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.