Which P-Funk keyboardist was nicknamed the "Wizard of Woo"?

“Which P-Funk keyboardist was nicknamed the ‘Wizard of Woo’? The answer is Bernie Worrell.” Worrell was a founding musical force in George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic collective and helped make keyboards and synthesizers central to late-1970s funk. His nickname, usually styled “The Wizard of Woo,” plays on both his initials and the otherworldly sonic character of his work.

Worrell was classically trained from childhood. He began piano lessons at age three, wrote a concerto at eight, studied at Juilliard, and graduated from the New England Conservatory in 1967. That background gave him unusually deep command of harmony, while his adventurous use of Moog and other synthesizers helped create P-Funk’s futuristic sound.

He is sometimes confused with other major P-Funk figures, including George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and Garry Shider, but Worrell’s defining role was as a keyboardist, composer, and electronic-sound innovator. Beyond P-Funk, he toured with Talking Heads, played on many collaborative projects, and became a founding member of the CBS Orchestra in 1993.