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Sly & the Family Stone Official Website
Sly and the Family Stone were an American rock, funk, and soul band from San Francisco. Active from 1967 to 1983, the band was pivotal in the development of soul, funk, and psychedelic music. Headed by singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist Sly Stone, and containing several of his family members and friends, the band was the first major American rock band to have an "integrated, multi-gender" lineup. Brothers Sly Stone and singer/guitarist Freddie Stone combined their bands (Sly & the Stoners and Freddie & the Stone Souls) in 1967. Sly and Freddie Stone, trumpeter Cynthia Robinson, drummer Gregg Errico, saxophonist Jerry Martini, and bassist Larry Graham completed the original lineup; Sly and Freddie's sister, singer/keyboardist Rose Stone, joined within a year. This collective recorded five Billboard Hot 100 hits which reached the top 10, and four ground-breaking albums, which greatly influenced the sound of American pop music, soul, R&B, funk, and hip hop music. In the preface of his 1998 book For the Record: Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History, Joel Selvin sums up the importance of Sly and the Family Stone's influence on African American music by stating "there are two types of black music: black music before Sly Stone, and black music after Sly Stone" The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
During the early 1970s, the band switched to a grittier funk sound, which was as influential on the music industry as their earlier work. The band began to fall apart during this period because of drug abuse and ego clashes; consequently, the fortunes and reliability of the band deteriorated, leading to its dissolution in 1975. Sly Stone continued to record albums and tour with a new rotating lineup under the "Sly and the Family Stone" name from 1975 to 1983. In 1987, Sly Stone was arrested and sentenced for cocaine use, after which he went into effective retirement. |
Sly & the Family Stone came into their own with their second album, Dance to the Music. This is exuberant music, bursting with joy and invention. If there's a shortage of classic material, with only the title track being a genuine classic, that winds up being nearly incidental, since it's so easy to get sucked into the freewheeling spirit and cavalier virtuosity of the group. Consider this -- prior to this record no one, not even the Family Stone, treated soul as a psychedelic sun splash, filled with bright melodies, kaleidoscopic arrangements, inextricably intertwined interplay, and deft, fast rhythms. Yes, they wound up turning "Higher" into the better "I Want to Take You Higher" and they recycle the title track in the long jam "Dance to the Medley," but there's such imagination to this jam that the similarities fade as they play. And, if these are just vamps, well, so are James Brown's records, and those didn't have the vitality or friendliness of this. Not a perfect record, but a fine one all the same. (SOURCE: All Music)
Higher! packs live rarities and should-have-been hits along with the pop-out classics, and the effect is to give you a full picture of a fitful man desperate to rally the masses into a pop utopia, fearful (or is it knowing?) that he was really headed to the shadows. The band is astonishing, especially in the live cuts assembled here; its members rehearsed fanatically and were game for taking the songs new places on a given night. You can hear Stone calling out to them musically and verbally, and them responding to his emotional temperature; the constant, perhaps, is the insistent thrum of Larry Graham's bass. Stone has long settled in the shadows, but this collection shows the torture and the mastery bound together, and equally inspiring to the man. (SOURCE: NPR)
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Sept 27, 2011: Sly Stone is homeless and living in a camper-van in L.A., the world learned Sunday, thanks to the director of a documentary about Sly and the Family Stone who co-wrote a story for the New York Post. However, in some boiled-down reports circulating since Sunday's story was published, a depiction of Stone as content and continuing to record music on a laptop in the van he calls home falls short of painting a complete picture of the funk legend's situation. Stone's financial woes and transient lifestyle were brought to light in 2009, ahead of the release of director Willem Akema's documentary, "Coming Back for More."
It's a huge step down for the onetime multimillionaire, who sold his music rights to Michael Jackson for a mere $1 million in 1984 and as recently as 2007 did an interview with the Los Angeles Times at a secluded home in the Napa Valley.Stone sued former manager Jerry Goldstein for $50 million in early 2010, alleging fraud and the diversion of $20 million to $30 million in royalties. Goldstein countersued in August 2010, alleging the singer had delivered a slanderous rant against him while onstage at the Coachella music festival. Yet Stone told the Post for the recent article, "I like my small camper. I just do not want to return to a fixed home. I cannot stand being in one place. I must keep moving." (SOURCE: LA Times )
It's a huge step down for the onetime multimillionaire, who sold his music rights to Michael Jackson for a mere $1 million in 1984 and as recently as 2007 did an interview with the Los Angeles Times at a secluded home in the Napa Valley.Stone sued former manager Jerry Goldstein for $50 million in early 2010, alleging fraud and the diversion of $20 million to $30 million in royalties. Goldstein countersued in August 2010, alleging the singer had delivered a slanderous rant against him while onstage at the Coachella music festival. Yet Stone told the Post for the recent article, "I like my small camper. I just do not want to return to a fixed home. I cannot stand being in one place. I must keep moving." (SOURCE: LA Times )