I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone

by Jeff Kaliss

  Back on the San Francisco Peninsula, the Family Stone completed its booking at the Cathedral in June '67, on the eve of the Summer of Love. Rich, despite what he'd been promised, saw no more money from the band. A couple of months later, the Cathedral was shut down by a fire, and its proprietor began contemplating a more dependable and rewarding occupation. His former star opening act had started looking east.

  SLY & THE FAMILY STONE had a sense early on that they wouldn't be comfortable in anyone's pigeonhole. They were impressed by new manager David Kapralik's industry credentials and track record, but skeptical about following in the footsteps of his latest successful clients, Peaches & Herb, a successful lounge act with a few hits. "That's what [David] wanted us to be," notes Jerry Martini. "But Sly didn't wanna do lounge. He wanted to do concerts. So it was harder to break us."

  Likewise, the Family Stone didn't hear itself as necessarily concordant with the hippie lifestyle and the so-called San Francisco Sound that accompanied it. "Being in San Francisco in 1967, it wasn't about rock 'n' roll, it was about psychedelics," says Greg Errico. "It was Quicksilver [Messenger Service], the Grateful Dead, Blue Cheer. And it had nothing to do with what we were doing, and we had nothing to do with that ... I had no interest in going with a psychedelic group. What I found myself in the middle of, I couldn't have dreamed it any better. I felt very comfortable, very natural." What separated the Family Stone from many of the groups associated with psychedelia was its tightly plotted balance of voices and instruments, memorable on later hits. Many of the players involved in the San Francisco sound, by contrast, were guitar-based, with a more relaxed approach to songwriting and arranging that allowed for some amount of extended improvisation. These were the antecedents of today's jam bands.

  The Family Stone needed a showcase away from San Francisco. With help from a Bay Area mover and shaker with gaming connections, they got an extended booking in July 1967 at a Las Vegas strip club called the Pussycat a Go-Go, which provided live entertainment (and only a bit of gaming) into the wee hours. By this point, the Family Stone, with David's consent, was playing original material alongside its innovative covers. Commuting between Vegas and Columbia's studio in Los Angeles on days off from the Pussycat, the band recorded some of the material for what would become A Whole New Thing. Sly's youngest sister, Vaetta (nicknamed "Vet"), provided background vocals, as she would for future albums, alongside Elva "Tiny" Mouton and Mary McCreary, two women with whom Vet had been performing and recording gospel as the Heavenly Tones.

  The members of the Family Stone began to sparkle on and off the stage during their weeks in Vegas. Sly, Freddie, and Larry cruised the Strip in garishly colored Thunderbirds. Band members sometimes wore wigs for their Pussycat shows, and energized the audience by stepping down among them from the stage. Celebrity fans curious to witness the new music after their own gigs in the casinos included Bobby Darin and the Fifth Dimension. Ultimately Sly attracted a different kind of attention by taking up with the club owner's white girlfriend, Anita, provoking not only the expected sexual jealousy but a barrage of threats and racial epithets. Jerry related Sly's reaction: " [He] got up onstage and put his hands up and told the story to the people, and blew the club owner's mind. He said, `We are gonna pack up and leave, because I can't have my woman here, and we are being racially persecuted' ... Everybody that was at that club stood up and gave us a standing ovation." Jerry then had to hurriedly gather his then-wife and kids and join a police-escorted caravan headed out of town.

  In the meantime, the tracks the band had laid down in L.A. for Columbia weren't leading to the rapid recognition they'd hoped for. A Whole New Thing "was a musicians' album," reflects Jerry. "So it never really made it big anywhere except Las Vegas, where we played. We didn't have a hit single, we had more of a cult following."

  "The first album was just a labor of love, it was us," adds Greg. "We thought we were the greatest thing since spaghetti, but the only people who had [the album] were musicians. You'd go across the country and every musician had it under his arm, but nobody else knew about it."

  Among his CBS colleagues and clients in New York, David was delighted to find A Whole New Thing making an impression on notable ears. "Its marketability I wasn't sure of," he admits. "But guys like Mose Allison and Jon Hendricks [were] talking about Sly. I heard this through Teo Macero, who produced them. `He's a musicians' musician' was the word around CBS." David encouraged the band members to spend some time making a name for themselves in New York City, and they were up to the challenge.

  "New York either loves you or they hate you, and we were a success there," Jerry reports. He remembers, during an early New York engagement, "having to take the subway from 136 West 55th Street, the Gorham Hotel, all the way down into the Village, wearing my weird clothes. People leave you alone, if you're weird in New York, they don't bother you."

  In August '67, the act was booked at the Electric Circus, a venue operated by former talent agent Jerry Brandt, and among the invited guests was Al DeMarino, an up-and-comer at the William Morris Agency, where Brandt had been his boss. "Jerry called me up and said, `I have this great band coming in, and I'm trying to do a favor for a friend, try to get down here and see them,"' Al remembers. "It was at the time when psychedelia had really started to come forth, and [the Circus] had become a very hip, `in' place to be, with strobe lights and projections. I got there the first night. I was knocked out by the show, and immediately went up to Sly and the band and introduced myself. Jerry arranged an immediate meeting with David Kapralik ... and I was very aggressive not only about signing them, but caring about them." What made Al so eager to secure the relatively unknown act for his employer, the largest diversified talent agency in the world, was, "The dynamics of the music, the strength of the music, Sly's leadership qualities onstage, and the chemistry within the band. They were more than band members, it felt like a family, they cared about each other."

  Al perceived A Whole New Thing as "a smash record," but he shared David's doubts about its marketability. Whatever its mass appeal, the album displayed the sophistication of good jazz. Sly's sophisticated arrangements showcased Larry's articulate bass lines and the brassy teamed horns of Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini, all especially notable on the opening track, where "Underdog" quoted "Frere Jacques" in a minor key. Greg's drumming on that same track seemed to presage the hip-hop of thirty years later. The swirling segue from "I Cannot Make It" to "Trip to Your Heart" was pure '67 psychedelia. But this mix of elements rendered it difficult to categorize the album within the accepted format of radio playlists and record store bins.

  Like the Jefferson Airplane with Grace Slick, and Big Brother with Janis Joplin, the Family Stone suggested a flower-power female-and-male bouquet from California, but they had a better handle on time and sounded more like a full-fledged band working and playing in harmony. They laid down pop grooves as impressive as Motown's, but without the impersonal grooming and choreography that glossed many of the faceless studio musicians who backed Berry Gordy's Motown vocalists. Onstage Sly Stone could sing with some of the bluely grit and edge of Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, but he also conveyed that endearing attitude of mischief that had once entranced both Ria Boldway and his radio audiences.

  Sly's group also boasted the squalling brass and syncopated power of James Brown's, but without Brown's cold control of meter and melody and his autocratic approach to organization. The Godfather of Soul had been known to slap fines on band members who missed beats or hit wrong notes. But Freddie Stone told Guitar World magazine that in the Family Stone, "No one was held to any rules. It wasn't necessarily about playing the traditional guitar part or the traditional bass part or the traditional horn line. It was about giving the musicians the freedom to create a part that they thought was appropriate."

  But the uniqueness of the Family Stone, however much it may have been appreciated in 1967 by members of the band and other musicians, didn't immediately result in strong records sales and a wide fan b
ase. Clive Davis, then president of Columbia Records, which owned Epic, recalled for Vanity Fair magazine an early lunch with Sly. "I told him, `I'm concerned that the serious radio stations that might be willing to play you'-by which I meant the underground FM radio stations-'will be put off by the costuming, the hairstyles:... Sly said, `Look, that's part of what I'm doing. I know people could take it the wrong way, but that's who I am: And he was right. I learned an important lesson from him: when you're dealing with a pathfinder, you allow that genius to unfold."

  Jerry Martini was summoned with Sly to meet with other Columbia execs and A & R (artists and repertoire) personnel responsible for artist development. "They played us other things, like [sweet soul successes] the Fifth Dimension, and they said, `We want you to do this,"" Jerry recalls. "Sly walked out of there very disturbed and upset, because [of the lack of recognition of] his innovative ideas and drumbeats."

  Greg remembers that, after the disappointment of A Whole New Thing, "Sly was very conscious that we had to simplify the music, that we had to find a subject that could talk to the audience. It was kind of like the Pied Piper ... something that he had to touch upon, and live with himself, because he was going to have to be doing `it' every night. We were all gonna have to do `it' every night."

  David Kapralik recalls Sly "coming into my office and saying, `I'm going back to San Francisco. And I'm gonna stay there. And if anything ever happens with [the debut] album, let me know about it. And I say to him, `Sly, you gotta make a hit single. And you have to have a dum-dum-repeat lyric. And in between all those dum-dum-repeats, you put all your schticklach.' That was my first and only A & R suggestion to him in all the years that we were together. Because I'm not qualified, I'm not a musician. That was just something I knew from being a promotions man all those years.

  Sly reportedly sought a transfer to Atlantic Records, the legendary R & B, soul, and jazz label whose roster included Ray Charles and the Coasters, but he demurred when Atlantic asked him to forsake his band for their hand-picked musicians. (It wouldn't be the only time that a label tried to break up the band; it would happen again around the recording of Riot.) Sly was not only insistent on maintaining the Family Stone, but on enhancing it with his middle sister, Rose, whom he approached on his return to San Francisco. "I didn't want to just be a slave to the keyboard," Rose admitted later in The Skin I'm In. "And [Sly] said, `No, you can just sing.' I said, `Okay, then.' So I quit my job [at a San Francisco music store] and the next thing he said was, `Okay, we got you on keyboards.' I was so mad!" Fortunately for the band and fans alike, Rose also got to display her clarion soprano as the group's lead female vocalist. Her sound partnered gorgeously, and uniquely, with Sly's funky midrange and Larry's soul-stirring bassbaritone vocals

  These days, without having scored a blockbuster at the start, an act like the Family Stone might well be dropped from any major label. In the late '60s, new acts were still being given a chance to develop their style and realize their artistic and commercial potentials. By the fall of '67, Al DeMarino was touting Sly & the Family Stone "within the agency at every opportunity, even at TV meetings and film meetings," and finding what bookings he could for them. "What I felt I needed to do in that initial year was select sizeable, worthwhile engagements," he says. But that "was easier said than done, because with any new act you're up against people who don't want to pay you what you're worth. So you bang the drums."

  Propelled by Al's and David's metaphorical drumming and Greg's literal efforts, a much more accessible sophomore album, Dance to the Music, was assembled in New York's CBS recording studios. Don Puluse, an engineer young in years but musically well trained (at Eastman and the Manhattan School) and adept at deploying the then-new eight-track technology, was assigned to record the bulk of the album in September 1967. (A couple of tracks had been recorded in California earlier by Bryan Ross- Myring.) But aside from electronics, Don first needed to recharge his young clients' energy for the project.

  "I had to give them a bit of a pep talk, because of the downers of Atlantic Records and CBS, where you had people already knocking them before they had even laid down anything," Don recalls. "I had to say, `Hey, guys, you put all that aside. You're in the studio now, now is the time to make a record. We can't worry about what the suits in the other building are worrying about: And Sly said, `Yeah, sounds right, man, let's go!' And they went in there, and the thing which really stood out was the energy, which was outrageous. They would do very few takes, and to listen back they would come into the control room and dance."

  The group's rightful reveling in their own music didn't interfere with the task at hand. "Sly would bark out orders: `Jerry, do this! Cynthia, do that! Freddie, play it this way!' He would just, in about thirty seconds, summarize what he expected, and they'd be playing again. We did some overdubbing, but basically they did the whole take." Producer Don Was, in Rolling Stone in 2004, pointed out, "Sly orchestrated those early records in very advanced waysa little guitar thing here that would trigger the next part that would trigger the next part."

  Changes then in progress in the mode of studio recording may have furthered Sly's own tight control of the process, Don Puluse figures. "The groups had started coming in ... saying, `Hey, we're not gonna record with one guy and mix [i.e., process the recorded tracks] with another guy,"' he explains. "It wasn't like the old three- or four-track recordings, where they did everything at one time, did a little overdubbing, and sent it to a mix room." With more tracks to manage, "This was much more complicated. They would do overdubbing, over a period of weeks or months. Then, if they'd sent it to a new guy, he'd have to start all over. So I wound up [assigned to artists] like Sly, and later [the jazz-rock ensemble] Chicago, people who insisted on doing the mixing right there where they knew the sound, and with the same engineer." Don had the good taste to realize, with Sly's band, that "it would be foolish to try to get ultra-clean sounds, when what was really important was the music. I had done a lot of recording, but Dance to the Music had so much funk to it. Whoa! Where the hell did that come from? It was incredible!"

  Funk had just begun to define itself within pop music in the late '60s, though its roots of course reached much further back. Funk and soul scholar and writer Rickey Vincent, in his Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One, singles out a definition of the form by Fred Wesley, a trombonist and collaborator with James Brown, Bootsy Collins, and George Clinton. Says Fred, "If you have a syncopated bass line, a strong, strong heavy back beat from the drummer, a counter-line from the guitar or the keyboard, and someone soul-singing on top of that, in a gospel style, then you have funk." The Family Stone had all of this, as well as an embarrassment of individual and collective uniqueness and talent. Jerry claims that Cynthia was "the first female African American trumpet player in history." While this is unsupportable-Valaida Snow, for one, launched a successful career on vocals and trumpet in 1918-it's evident that female instrumentalists, aside from occasional pianists and guitarists, were rare in rock, and that Cynthia had acquired a strong, spirited, and accurate horn technique in her hometown of Sacramento. "Cynthia," wrote Sly in Dance to the Music's original liner notes, "is one of the most talented trumpets alive and that includes guys!" Jerry himself, who'd played Vegas and overseas venues before anybody else in the Family Stone, was a sophisticated jazz-wise reedman. Together he and Cynthia often gave the impression of a much larger brass section.

  Larry laid down his trademark down-and-dirty thumpin' and pluckin' bass, connected through new effects units designed for guitars-fuzz and wah-wah pedals, which altered the instrument's signal to give it a fat or stinging "underwater" tone. Larry's taut, snappy slaps of his Fender Jazz and Vox Constellation basses, making use of melody as rhythm, was a stimulating change-up from the happy bass burble of Paul McCartney or James Jamerson, and he influenced imitators for decades to come.

  Freddie possessed, in the opinion of bandmate Jerry, "just about the most innovative guitar style of all.... You ask any of the
modern-day rhythm guitarists who they listen to, and Freddie Stone, or Freddie Stewart, would be at the top of the list. There's no funkier or better rhythm guitar player."

  His brother Sly, having willed the guitar function to Freddie, had quickly mastered a variety of keyboards, and was heard on both joyful and soulful organ passages throughout the album, with sister Rose partnering prettily on keyboards and solo and harmonized vocals. Sly variously made use of a Farfisa Professional, Yamahas of various years, a Vox Continental, and often a classic Hammond B-3. Greg powerfully and confidently propelled the rhythm, without encroaching on Larry's standout rumbles. "Greg had a drumming style that really complemented what I was doing," Larry testified to Bass Player. "We never had any collisions. It wouldn't have worked if he filled up a lot of space, which is what everybody else was doing at the time.... Greg plays on the money; he doesn't rush or lag."

  It took the newly invigorated band a few months to get heard beyond 52nd Street. But when the second album's title tune was released as a single in the dawn of the new year, 1968, it took hold of the hearts, minds, and wallets of the general public on both coasts, in between, and around the globe. It climbed to number 8 on the Billboard pop chart and to number 7 in the United Kingdom. Out on the West Coast, "Dance to the Music" caught up with young would-be rock authority Joel Selvin on a blissful Saturday morning, while he was driving down the Eastshore Freeway near Berkeley with the radio on. "And it's Sly, sitting in on KDIA again," Joel remembers. "He hasn't been on in maybe a year. Wow, Sly! And he's all pumped up, as usual, and he's got his record, and he puts it on.... It was if something had come from outer space! It was so far beyond anything we had heard on the radio up to that point: the breakdown of the a cappella voices, the way the vocals were voiced, Larry Graham's boom-boom-boom, the way it was all pieced together. It was just literally the way I said in my book: There was black music before Sly Stone, and black music after Sly Stone. A watershed event, and that was the record."