In the late 1960s Sly and the Family Stone was a realization of the social and political ambitions of a generation, a fully integrated band with both male and female members that wedded black music and psychedelic rock in a joyous synthesis. Its spiritual and musical leader was Sylvester Stone, whose interest in music predated his family's move from Texas to San Francisco in the mid 1950s. His career actually started when he was four years old, singing in his family's gospel group, the Stewart Four.
At the age of sixteen he recorded his first song, "Long Time Away," which became a modest regional hit. While he studied music theory, composition, and trumpet at Vallejo Junior College, Sly and his brother played with bands in the San Francisco Bay area. His work as a disk-jockey and producer put him in contact with Tom Donahue, the pioneer behind album-oriented radio. In 1966 Stewart formed a band called the Stoners; after a personnel shift the outfit was renamed Sly and the Family Stone.
The band did contain real family members—Sly's brother Fred on guitar and his sister Rosie on piano— but also included local musicians of various ethnic backgrounds, including Cynthia Robinson, a white trumpet player. Rosie Stone and Robinson were the first prominent female rock instrumentalists, and they played a crucial role in creating opportunities for women in the genre. Their first album, A Whole New Thing (1967), didn't perform particularly well, but the follow-up, Dance to the Music, became an unexpected hit when the title track entered the Top Ten; it was followed in short order by "Everyday People" and "I Want to Take You Higher." The band was explosive on stage; as members of the psychedelic brotherhood they wore outlandish costumes and hairstyles, but they also adopted the precision choreography of Motown artists. Their performance at Woodstock was hailed as one of the festival's best and introduced the band to a mainstream white audience.
The band had frequently included political statements on its albums, exemplified by songs like "Don't Call Me a Nigger, Whitey," and "Hot Fun in the Summertime," but these were overlooked until There's a Riot Goin' On was released in 1971. The slower tempos and darker sound of the album was an early testament of funk, and its militant stance belied the group's earlier affiliation with the hippie ethos. This new direction was never fully explored, as Sly Stone had already begun a precipitous slide into drug addiction and mental illness from which he has never recovered.
|
 |
|
|
Miles Davis, Booker T. and the MGs, James Brown, Wilson Pickett
Must Haves:
 "Everyday People"
"I Want to Take You Higher"
"Dance to the Music"
"Hot Fun in the Summertime"
Parliament/Funkadelic, the Ohio Players, Prince, Was (not Was), Arrested
|
|
