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.
All together, they provided a wall of backing vocals to compliment Sly’s message of self-determination, singing the title, letting Sly have the next line by himself, then coming in at the end of each triplet.
Stand
In the end you’ll still be you
One that’s done all the things you set out to do
Stand
There’s a cross for you to bear
Things to go through if you’re going anywhere
Stand
For the things you know are right
It’s the truth that the truth makes them so uptight
Stand
All the things you want are real
You have you to complete and there is no deal
It all leads up to the chorus, an all-hands-on-deck — with handclaps! — shout of:
Stannnnnnnnnd!
Stannnnnnnnnd!
Stannnnnnnnnd!
It was actually a pretty cool vocal arrangement, and because it was so pretty, you didn’t even think to miss the “anybody could sing anything” ethos of most their other songs, and I would argue that they made up for it with the ending, where “Stand!” ends up going up in a completely different direction — the vocalists chanting “stand! nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah” over a gospel-funk rhythm.
Apparently, this ending was re-recorded by Sly with studio musicians, which is probably why it sticks out a bit: it’s much more slick than what you had previously heard on a Sly & The Family Stone record, and while a whole record of this kind of slickness would have been a drag, it works well enough in the context of “Stand!” to be a fun coda.
That said, as a single, “Stand!” didn’t do nearly as well as “Everyday People,” making it to only #22 on the Billboard Singles chart, and perhaps part of the reason is that the b-side of the single was actually the better song. But we’ll talk about that tomorrow.
“Stand”
“Stand!” Live on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, 1974
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