Bernie Worrell is something of a mysterious figure, and I think that was by design. I wanted to learn more about his early life, prior to joining Parliament/Funkadelic. I didn’t find any published biographies on him specifically, and wanted to avoid the books and articles that are heavily focused on his time in that band. I wanted to know more about his education and his early musical training, and all the things he was doing before he joined with George Clinton in Detroit. As I was reading and listening to the few interviews he did give, I realized that there was a lot of confusing and conflicting information out there. Sometimes misinterpretations of what he said, sometimes memory lapses or confusion on his part, and sometimes filling in the blanks for things he did not say (or was not asked). This is my attempt to distill some of what I learned, and to document it in the hopes that if someone else is looking for this information, as I was, there will be some more detail and context available to them in one place.