The music world lost two pioneering artists in the past few weeks: Sly Stone and Brian Wilson. While stylistically they were worlds apart, they both hailed from the West Coast, were troubled and sometimes tortured souls, and created singular music as writers, producers, and songwriters that began with simple genres, surf music for Wilson and R&B for Stone.
While Wilson has received his due, Stone has not. His career peak was short-lived. However, when one hears the music of Prince and that of some of Stone’s contemporaries such as Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Miles, and even George Clinton, Stone’s was clearly an unparalleled career, primarily in how he created an almost undefinable sound and a music that simply didn’t exist before he fully matured and which was also very popular.
It’s ironic that at the same time as his passing, we got a previously unreleased live album that comes full circle back to the earliest live beginnings of Sly and the Family Stone. This raw, intimate live album was recorded in March of 1967 at the California venue Winchester Cathedral in Redwood City, south of San Francisco, only a few months before the group’s debut on Epic Records, A Whole New Thing.
The almost lo-fi release sounds like a hot R&B soul band playing for a Saturday night group of people who just wanted to party and dance. While one can hear faint echoes of riffs that would go on to be a part of one of the group’s biggest songs, “I Want to Take You Higher,” the rest of the set is more gritty bar band soul. Jimi Hendrix also cut his teeth as a guitarist with groups like this, although that was much earlier in time.
Stone set himself apart by combining the message and heft of the new rock sound of the day with heaps of electrified soul, funk, and R&B, an uncanny production command, and an ability to write songs that transcended genres and appealed to the tastes of a wide variety of listeners.
The set list includes a slew of soul rave-ups that were the staples of rock, soul, and R&B bands of the era, such as songs that originally appeared on some of the key labels of the time, Atlantic subsidiary ATCO (Ben E. King’s “What Is Soul?”), Stax subsidiary Volt (Otis Redding’s “I Can’t Turn You Loose”), and Motown (the Four Tops’ “Baby I Need Your Loving”). A Junior Walker & the All-Stars cover and a Joe Tex cover are also included. There’s even a cover of the New Orleans jazz workhorse “St. James Infirmary.”
A stark contrast to the group’s galvanizing live performance at Woodstock (with selections available on the Woodstock soundtrack release), it now joins the more representative 2015 archival release Live at the Fillmore East October 4th & 5th, 1968, as one of only three official live recordings.
This album was originally issued as a Record Store Day release with a gatefold cover and on clear vinyl. For both releases, the lacquers were cut by Kevin Gray working with tapes that were clearly not of audiophile studio quality, and the vinyl record comes in a polyvinyl sleeve. A wonderful 24-page booklet is included and features exhaustive liner notes, interviews with members of the band, previously unreleased photos, and an extensive array of memorabilia.
This is another release from Sly & the Family Stone that further provides insights into the group’s roots and, hopefully, may signal future archival studio and live recordings.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
