Sly & The Family Stone Lifts Everyday People Higher

An RCE Exclusive

By Byron Lee

During my undergraduate years, me and my suitemates hosted a party that had people of many different races in attendance. At the height of the festivities, one CD played all the way through. That CD was the Sly & The Family Stone Anthology.

Music with a message can be powerful if it moves many. For this edition of the RCE, we will profile a group who continues to reach listeners: Sly & The Family Stone, led by visionary Sly Stone.

Sly Stone was born Sylvester Stewart on March 15, 1944 in Dallas, Texas to RC and Alpha Stone. Soon after his birth, the family relocated to Vallejo, a suburb of San Francisco, CA, being one of two black families in the neighborhood.

Young Sylvester would first be exposed to the power of music on Sundays, when his father, a janitor, would take the family to a Pentecostal church on his day off. Sylvester was taken with the music he heard and almost immediately started learning to play instruments. He formed a band with three of his siblings (sister Rosemary,

younger brother Freddie, and youngest sister Vietta) to form the Stewart Four (with oldest sister Loretta accompanying them on piano) and the group started playing at the church, eventually branching out to other churches in the Bay Area. (Sylvesterπs first recording, ≥On The Battlefield for My Lord,≤ appeared when he was only five). Even at that young age, Sly, who obtained his nickname when a classmate misspelled his name on a chalkboard, took it very personally when crowds didnπt react the way he wished them to.

Continuing to work on his craft through his high school years, Sly took classes for music composition and music theory at the local community college. Later taking a course in deejaying, he started spinning records under the name ≥Sly Stone≤ in Oakland, becoming one of the first to mix songs from the R& B and rock genres, a taboo practice during a time when segregation of all sorts was the rule.

By his late teens, Stone could play various instruments and yearned to once again make his own music. He struggled until two former deejays approached him to write songs for a label they had started, Autumn Records. ≥CπMon and Swin,≤ a song Stone wrote for Bobby Freeman, sold a million copies. Stone would go on to sing other songs of a novelty nature, but none caught on the way Freemanπs hit did. (During this time, Stone was exposed to psychedelia through the rock bands he helped produce at the label.)

Stone grew restless, not only because his own songs werenπt taking off, but because he longed to make a statement. He wanted to talk about race and social interaction while also emphasizing a festive atmosphere. ≥Iπve had groups since I was teenager,≤ Stone told the New York Times in a February 1970 piece quoted in Stoneπs World Musicians entry, ≥They were never nothing. Nobody really wanted to get involved, and I had a lot of things on my mind.≤

In 1966, Stone tried again when he formed the Stoners. He soon, however, broke the group up, retaining the bandπs trumpeter, Cynthia Robinson, for the start of a new band. He recruited his brother Freddie to play guitar, his sister Rosemary on electric piano, and his cousin Larry Graham for bass playing duties. Rounding out the group where saxophonist Jerry Martini and his cousin Gregg Errico. To emphasize the message of unity, Stone christened the group Sly & The Family Stone. (The inclusion of Martini and Errico, who are white, would make The Family a groundbreaking group in another way. They would become one of the first interracial bands in our country to become popular domestically.) 

Slyπs fortunes improved quickly. The band was discovered in 1967 while played at a nightclub by Epic executive David Kapralik.  Their first album ≥A Whole New Thing≤ wowed musicians (George Clinton reportedly studied the album intensely) but it failed to capture the mainstream audienceπs attention. Nursing the sensitivity cultivated in his early years, Sly vowed to go a strictly commercial route for the next release. Kapralik counseled the artist, insisting that all Sly had to do was allow each member to have a showcase, trading off both solos and vocals during the same song.

This move would be exemplified by the groupπs next single, the infectious ≥Dance to the Music,≤ where Sly mentions each instrument and adds it one at a time until a joyous symphony of funk results. The song would go on to be one of the groupπs most recognized songs. Their next album, which would carry the same name as their breakthrough single, garnered more recognition.

Their next album, ≥Life,≤ while viewed by some as having stronger songs than its predecessor, failed to duplicate ≥Dance≤πs success. This lackluster reception was merely a temporary setback. The groupπs fourth album, ≥Stand!,≤ would make them superstars  The hit title track, along with the smashes ≥Everyday People,≤ ≥You Can Make It If You Try,≤ ≥Sing a Simple Song≤ and ≥I Want To Take You Higher≤ were songs that tapped into Americaπs mind, heart and feet.

≥Everyday People,≤ the groupπs first number one hit, merits special attention. Melding  gospel pep with a funk stomp, the piece brilliantly utilized a sing-song chorus that uses a cadence commonly heard on grade school playgrounds and to many represented the peak of the idealism of the 60s, the idea being that people from disparate backgrounds could respect each otherπs differences, find common ground and work together towards a better day.

≥Stand!≤ catapulted The Family onto the national stage, making them the first R&B group to play the Newport Jazz Festival. They also gave a landmark performance at 1969πs Woodstock (This performance was released last month on CD.). Fans were further infatuated with the non-LP singles ≥Hot Fun in the Summertime≤ and ≥Thank You (Falenttinme Be Mice Elf Agin)≤ b/w ≥Everybody Is A Star.≤

The same people moved by ≥Stand!≤ would crash down to earth with the release of 1971πs ≥Thereπs a Riot Goinπ On.≤ Undoubtedly cultivated as much by his personal struggles as by the weakening of the Civil Rights movement, ≥Riot≤ was a dark LP that found Stoneπs festive vocals frequently tweaked to a detached drone, an occurrence found on the single ≥Family Affair.≤  While debuting strong and revered to this day as a classic, the work turned some people off and, consequently, decreased The Familyπs fanbase slightly.

People who were surprised by the change in direction need look no further than the problems Sly & The Family were dealing with outside of the studio. As early as the success of ≥Everyday People,≤ there were reports of rampant drug use. To compound matters, Sly became increasingly unreliable to show up for performances on time, if at all, with his behavior, at times, resulting in violence from the audience. Fed up, Graham and Errico left the group before the release of the groupπs next album, losses from which the band would not recover. Educator Bill Mendelsohn speaks highly of Grahamπs abilities. ≥Larry Graham truly was the first to slap the bass strings, developing the åfunk bassπ sound that we have come to associate with all funk music,≤ he says, via e-mail correspondence, ≥Bootsy Collins picked up on this and brought it to James Brown.≤ Furthermore, evidence of Erricoπs essential contributions can be found by perusing the sample-tracking website www.the-breaks.com. The list of artists who have sampled the drums on ≥You Can Make It If You Try≤ takes up a whole page, while the listing for ≥Sing a Simple Song≤ takes up a full three pages.

The band soldiered on, delivering the relatively more upbeat ≥Fresh≤ in 1973, which featured the funk standard ≥If You Want Me To Stay≤ and a cover of Doris Dayπs ≥Que Sera Sera.≤ The much less successful ≥Small Talk≤ followed the following year, with the equally low-selling, if better reviewed ≥High on You≤ released in 1975. His final album of original material for Epic, ≥Heard Ya Missed Me, Well Iπm Back≤ tanked in 1976, and his first album for Warner Brothers, ≥Back On The Right Track,≤ suffered the same fate, three years later. (In an interesting footnote, Slyπs personal and professional life met a crossroads in 1974, when he married model Kathy Silva during a concert at Madison Square Garden. She filed for divorce four months later. )

The problem seems to have many facets. In addition to Slyπs struggle with addition, the audience that was still looking for new material was divided into two groups, neither of which he could satisfy: those who wanted a return to the classic funk of Stoneπs glory years and those who were looking for him to incorporate sounds of the emerging disco movement into his repertoire. (Tellingly, his final release on Epic was ≥Ten Years Too Soon,≤ an album that remixed his hits with disco beats.) His career would hit its nadir when, due to Slyπs repeated no-shows for studio dates, producer Stewart Levine was hired to do a mix-and-match job for the ages en route to completing ≥Ainπt But One Way≤ for a 1983 release. Stone was arrested for cocaine possession in 1987, an event from which his career never truly recovered.

Stone was reclusive during the 90s and the first half of the next decade. Fans had their interest piqued when it was announced that Sly & The Family Stone would be honored at the 2006 Grammys. During a tribute medley that included performances from John Legend, Will I. Am and Fantasia, Sly emerged. His appearance obscured by shades, a large golden Mohawk and a silver outfit, Stone was only onstage for a few moments before waving goodbye to the crowd. Viewers reacted to the spectacle differently: some fans were invigorated by the return of the funk legend, while others were baffled by its brevity (Jake Coyle of the Associated Press, firmly in the latter camp, referred to Stone as the J. D. Salinger of funk, referencing the reclusive author of the literary classic ≥Catcher in the Rye.≤ )

Some have lamented Stoneπs status as a star who burned brightly, then burned out.  ≥His psychological collapse is one of the sadder developments in post-Summer of Love [1969] pop music,π says cultural observer Paul Tatara of wallofpaul.com.

These same fans, however, still find much to treasure in the sonics and social-consciousness of The Familyπs glory years. Bill Mendelsohn says of Stone, ≥He took James Brownπs tightly controlled funk and loosened it up, infusing it with west coast bay area 60πs melodic elements. Apollo theatre meets psychedelia. Slyπs beats/rhythms were just as complex, if not more, than Brownπs were. One music industry exec referred to Sly as the Bach of rhythm.≤  Adds Tatara, ≥He mixed in a little Beatles and a little bit of brother James, and came up with something incredibly catchy, some of the more immediately memorable hits of the late 60s and early 70s.≤

The Familyπs influence is found in the artists who have sampled or covered their songs and the films and commercials that have used them prominently. Fishbone and The Roots have covered ≥Everybody Is A Star≤; Martin Lawrenceπs 2001 vehicle ≥Black Knight≤ features a mid-film cast performance of ≥Dance to the Music≤; Dana Daneπs ≥Tale From The Daneside≤ samples ≥If You Want Me To Stay≤ and Red Hot Chili Peppers covered the song outright,; Queen Latifah sampled ≥Dance To The Music≤ to make a song of the same name; Janet Jackson took the breakdown from ≥Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)≤ for the title track from her ≥Rhythm Nation≤ album, and a current subway ad with company spokesperson Jared Fogle and record breaking Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps uses ≥Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)≤ as a backdrop.

Furthermore, the mark of the Family is seen in other ways. The multiracial aspect of the groupπs influence is reflected today in groups such as The Dave Matthews Band, Incubus and Gym Class Heroes, while the social justice sprit of their music undoubtedly inspired Public Enemy, Dead Prez and Rage Against The Machine. Finally, the act of deftly combining different styles of music has a clear heir apparent. ≥Prince, for one, was definitely listening,≤ says Tatara.

It should be no surprise, then, that college students were partying to Slyπs grooves in the late 90πs and that people from all walks of life are still dancing to the music.