Album: Dance to The Music
Year: 1967
. . .
Blazing through the late sixties like an unexpected comet, Sly & The Family Stone filled the skies with incendiary live performances, a couple of classic studio albums, and some of the greatest singles ever recorded — many of which fill one of top five greatest hits albums ever released anywhere.
Sly & The Family Stone was the brainchild of a Texas-born, Bay Area-raised DJ who was born as Sylvester Stewart but went by the stage name Sly Stone. Sly had the idea of a multi-gender, multi-racial band that was — as their debut album proclaimed — a whole new thing. Said whole new thing didn’t quite click, as even the best tracks — like the stop-start soul shouter single “Underdog” — didn’t quite add up to more than the sum of their parts.
That certainly wasn’t the case with their second single, “Dance to The Music,” which was made and released under protest, as their meddling record execs wanted them to point their new thing towards commerciality. Thus, “Dance to The Music,” which had only a single message — initially screamed by trumpeter Cynthia Robinson — “dance to the music!” Which
The cool thing about “Dance to The Music,” of course, was that the perfect introduction to Sly & The Family Stone, because most of it was quite literally an introduction to Sly & The Family Stone.
It starts off the horn section of trumpeter Cynthia Robinson & saxophonist Jerry Martini riffing over drummer Gregg Errico’s stomping Motown beat followed by guitarist Freddie Stone and Robinson & Martini twisting guitar and trumpet licks around each other while Robinson gets our attention.
That’s followed immediately by just the singers sing “bum-bum-dah-dum-dum” and scat around each over just a tambourine after which they all sing “dance to the music” a few times after Errico re-ups the beat. And now it’s time for the band to explain themselves.
That starts with guitarist Freddie Stone:
All we need is a drummer
For people who only need a beat, yeahI’m gonna add a little guitar
And make it easy to move your feet
And, of course, everybody drops out after “only need a beat” — listen closely, and you can hear them invoking the handclap rule — and after he introduces himself, Freddie Stone plays some psychedelic licks, and now here comes bassist Larry Graham.
I’m gonna add some bottom
So that the dancers just won’t hide
And boom!! Some big-ass bass, over which it’s finally Sly’s turn:
You might like to hear my organ
I said ‘Ride, Sally, ride’
And of course while Sly plays his organ solo, Freddie Stone introduces the horn section, allowing Cynthia and Jerry to play some licks, and after that, it’s back down to the scatting and climaxing with, well, you know.
Dance to the music
Dance to the music
Dance to the music
Dance to the music
Dance to the music
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that Slade’s “Cum on Feel The Noize” sounded like you were eavesdropping on people who were having more fun than you’ll ever have. But “Dance to The Music” sounds like you’ve stumbled into a party where everybody is glad to see you and immediately your whole world lights up. Which was a huge part of its appeal. You were hanging around with these people, dancing to their music.
Sure, while on a superficial level, “Dance to The Music” is barely even a song, on every single other level, it’s the sound of the revolution in music that Sly Stone envisioned. Oh, and it was as catchy and infectious as the Omicron variant. Released just as 1967 was ending, “Dance to The Music” was a massive smash in both the U.S. and the U.K, making it to #8 there and #7 there. Weirdly enough, “Dance To The Music” was their highest-charting single in the U.K., but in the U.S., they were just getting going.
“Dance to the Music”
“Dance to the Music Live on U.K. TV, 1969
“Dance to The Music” / “Sing a Simple Song” on TV, 1969?
“Dance to the Music” live on Soul Train
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