Archives for January 2022

Certain Songs #2262: Sly & The Family Stone – “Family Affair”

January 10, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: There’s A Riot Goin On
Year: 1971

. . .

Despite the fact that they ended 1969 basically on top of the world, it was nearly two years before said world got any new music from Sly & The Family Stone, an absolute eternity in those days. Of course, Sly & The Family Stone wasn’t the only band to essentially take 1970 off: both the Rolling Stones and The Who stop-gapped 1970 with live albums, and Sly & The Family Stone did the same with their essential Greatest Hits album.

Certain Songs #2261: Sly & The Family Stone – “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”

January 9, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Greatest Hits
Year: 1969

. . .

For Sly & The Family Stone, 1969 was a year where they went from triumph to triumph to triumph.

It started off with “Everyday People” riding high on the charts, on its way to being their first #1 hit single. That was followed by the springtime release of Stand!, their first undisputedly great album. In the summertime, they played fantastic sets at the Harlem Cultural Festival — sadly not properly documented until Questlove’s fantastic Summer of Soul documentary came out last year — and, of course, Woodstock. In between those two performances, they put out “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” which peaked at #2.

Certain Songs #2260: Sly & The Family Stone – “Everybody is A Star”

January 7, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Greatest Hits
Year: 1970

. . .

Remember how, in my post on “Everyday People,” I joked how it would be kind of impossible to see Sly Stone as one of titular everyday people, given all of his talent and how his music was topping the charts?

Well, he figured out a way around that conundrum, because of course he did. If Sly Stone, the star was everyday people, then it could only follow that everyday people were also stars!

Certain Songs #2259: Sly & The Family Stone – “Hot Fun in The Summertime”

January 6, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Greatest Hits
Year: 1969

. . .

Maybe the reason that Sly & The Family Stone didn’t release “Somebody’s Watching You” as a single after “Stand!” didn’t crack the top 20 was that they’d already started working on their next album, and “Hot Fun in The Summertime” was the first taste of that record. But of course, that record never materialized, and “Hot Fun in the Summertime” (and the next two songs I’m writing about) all ended up on 1970’s Greatest Hits record.

A languid shuffle driven by Sly’s piano, “Hot Fun in the Summertime” was released just in time to be riding high in the charts when they played Woodstock in mid-August, though it wasn’t one of the songs they played at Woodstock, because of reasons, I guess? I mean, why

Certain Songs #2258: Sly & The Family Stone – “Somebody’s Watching You”

January 5, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Stand!
Year: 1969

. . .

Because Sly Stone already had a surfeit of hit singles either written or on the horizon, a song as great as “Somebody’s Watching You” got relegated to “deep cut” status, sandwiched between “I Want To Take You Higher” and “Sing A Simple Song” on side one of Stand! (Side two would start out with “Everyday People” but be dominated by the 13:46 blues fuckjam “Sex Machine,” which is fun, but also more of a nod to the zeitgeist than the rest of of the record.)

Anyways, “Somebody’s Watching You” starts of with a quick burst of Freddie Stone guitar, and then almost instantly zips into the first verse, featuring some lovely harmonies by Sly and Rose Stone (I think), alternating lines with Larry Graham and Freddie Stone (I think) while Freddie plays funk rhythm licks. The point being that the verses almost play out as a call-and-response, even though they’re all addressing the same person.

Certain Songs #2257: Sly & The Family Stone – “I Want To Take You Higher”

January 4, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Stand!
Year: 1969

. . .

And so the two singles that preceded Stand! had the same format: message song on the A-side; party banger on the b-side. Of course, the outcomes were totally different: the message song “Everyday People” became a standard while topping the charts, clearly overshadowing its party banger b-side, “Sing A Simple Song,” whereas the message song “Stand!” got its ass whomped by the party banger “I Want To Take You Higher.”

Which is hardly fair to “Stand!” of course, but even in its truncated 2:56 single version, “I Wanna Take You Higher” is irresistible. And that version is an absolute patch on the fully-crazed version that not only sits on Stand! but also leads off 1970’s fabulous Greatest Hits album.

Certain Songs #2256: Sly & The Family Stone – “Stand!”

January 3, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Stand!
Year: 1969

. . .

Sly & The Family Stone’s follow-up single to “Everyday People” was also the title track to the first of their indisputably great albums, 1969’s Stand! And while it wasn’t quite as epochal, it was still a pretty fucking great way to open an album, and unlike a lot of their singles, it was mostly Sly doing the lead vocals and everybody else doing the backing vocals.

Everybody else, in this case, included the usual suspects of Freddie Stone, Rose Stone and Larry Graham, but also the vocal trio Little Sister, who consisted of Sly’s little sister Vet Stone plus Mary McCreary & Elva Mouton.

Certain Songs #2255: Sly & The Family Stone – “Sing A Simple Song”

January 2, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Stand!
Year: 1968

. . .

While the monster smash single “Everyday People” eventually made it to 1969’s titanic Stand! album, it was really kind of an outlier on an album that felt like Sly was trying to take on James Brown and Jimi Hendrix at the same time.

So, much closer to the prevailing ethos of Stand! was “Everyday People’s” b-side, “Sing A Simple Song,” which started off with some noisy, bluesy guitar until either Cynthia Robinson shouts the title, and they instantly slip into some hardcore funk led by Freddie Stone’s tough as nails guitar lick, counterpointed by the horns of Robinson and Jerry Martini’s.