When Sly had Stones:
New CD box set recalls a band that ushered in the era of Head Music

Back when music was music, when boy bands were called singing groups (and they really knew how to sing) and bands were a group of people who actually knew how to play an instrument and songwriters were people who sat down and thought up their own lyrics and musical arrangements, there was a young black man of great talent who was a disc jockey and then a producer out of San Francisco named Sylvester Stewart. This individual actually started what would later on become known as the “San Francisco Sound.” Today young white adults point to Seattle as the beginning of rock music as they know it and black young adults point to the deep south (or dirty south) as the forerunner of rap music. Few of them knew that the first thing Seattle had going was Jimi Hendrix.How many black youth can point to New York as the birthplace of rap through such luminaries as the Last Poets back in '68, or hip-hop a few years later in the Bronx?

Young people today would be hard-pressed to know how most of the popular music of the ‘60’s and 70’s came from cities like Detroit, Memphis and London and if it weren’t for Mr. Stewart there wouldn’t have been a Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane (Starship) or Funkadelic or a Bar-Kays or an Earth Wind and Fire as we have come to know them today. Sylvester-or Sly as he is better known as-created music that was driven from the heart, not the recording industry suits.

It was a music that ushered the transition of rock & roll to just rock, it was a music that would become free of time limits and FCC restrictions, but at the same time always using words and euphemisms skillfully, always relevant, never wasting a word. In time Sly would bring in his family and close friends, change the family sir-name to Stone (can you imagine Sly and the family Stewart?), an appropriate name since the word Stones or stoned was in. Back when Rolling Stone was more of an underground newspaper, (as opposed to the slick entertainment magazine it is today) a 3/19/70 cover-story stated: “Almost 3 years before the ‘San Francisco Sound’ Sly produced the very first rock and roll hits out of the city.” After producing other bands Sly and his Stones would eventually take the world by storm.

So a few weeks ago I took notice of a trade magazine review of the Sly and the Family Stone box set, roughly seven years and seven CDs of their most notable albums. It was well worth the 55 bucks I shelled out, it was music excitement, music revolution, evolution and sadly (thanks to Sly’s irresponsible antics) music de-evolution. The bothersome part is where are these Stones now that we desperately need them? Where is Sly’s guitar-playing brother Freddie, where is his keyboard-playing sister Rose, where is that incredibly talented bass singer and bass-player Larry Graham, where is his cousin; that cute Cynthia Robinson and her rebel-blaring trumpet sound and her screaming background voice and where are the white boys; Saxophonist Jerry Martini and his cousin drummer Greg Errico? In case you don’t know, we need ya’ll, bad.

I’m calling on all of you, Find Sly, rough him up a little if needed (just kidding) and drag him back in the studio immediately. The set is a collection of the Family’s seven best known albums from their first major release “A Whole New Thing” in ’67 and “Dance to the Music;” their ’68 breakthrough album, to 1974’s “Small Talk.” Oddly enough I find myself listening to “A Whole New thing” the most, which comes as a surprise to me since I loved the CDs of their other LPs such as “Stand,” “Life” and “Fresh.” “New Thing” has a raw hungry sound indicative of a lot of artist’s first releases and several lead vocals by Graham never hurts.

Absent from the collection are three songs that were hits but never made it on any album except for a couple of their Greatest Hits; “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” “Everybody is a Star,” and “Thank U Fa Lettinme Be Miceself Again,” and the Family’s last album, 1980’s “Heard You Missed Me, Well I’m Back (Not released by Epic like the others).” The band’s music is heavily sampled by hip-hop artists but there is no substitute for the energy and message they brought to the table. The Roots however profoundly invoke “Star” on the first song of their “Tipping Point” CD.

The real tragedy of the group is their own self destruction initiated by Sly’s drug use. The brother seems as lost and burned out as Pink Floyd’s Syd Barret, only still walking. He probably thinks record stores are still stocking 8-tracks and vinyl on their shelves. Even back in the day he’d become infamous for missing concerts. When the band showed up for one of Sinbad’s funk festivals Sly was missing and Larry Graham had to lead the group. Perhaps he was still clinging to old grudges, or maybe he was just being himself. Talk about troubled genius, Sly had skills and incredible influence on the music industry in the beginning. He can make it again, if he tries a little harder and digs a little deeper.This is a great buy for Black Music Month.