Sly Stone (born March 15, 1943) – You're The One (1970)
Sly wrote, produced, and played almost everything on this funk masterpiece by Little Sister, the Family Stone's backing vocalists who included his youngest sister Vet Stone.
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Sly Stone is a living legend who doesn’t get the respect he deserves for the important contributions he made to help bring funk into the world and all the ways in which he changed music forever.
A highly talented producer, singer/songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist genius musician, Sylvester Stewart led Sly and the Family Stone, the first superstar U.S. rock group to feature a racially integrated lineup with both male and female members. Their groundbreaking, highly influential sound synthesized soul, funk and rock, and showed music’s potential for uniting audiences of all colors as a universal language.
“Sly Stone has such an enormous impact on the music scene, it went beyond what he was doing,” said Joel Selvin (in a 2022 interview), the author of Sly & The Family Stone: An Oral History, first published in 1998. “Even Motown [noticed]. Berry Gordy came into a sales meeting and held up a copy of Stand! and said, ‘The old days are gone!’”
On his milestone 80th birthday, we’re turning the mic over to producer and disco remix pioneer John Luongo, who worked with Sly on his Ten Years Two Soon LP (1979), an entire album’s worth of excellent extended dancefloor remixes of Sly and the Family Stone classics like “Everyday People.” “Stand!” and “I Get High On You.”
“Sly is an underrated genius who along with Larry Graham redefined soul music (into) its finest form, and made it powerful, sexy and infectious.
When I worked on his album Ten Years Two Soon, we turned classic songs into tracks for the dancefloor with power, energy and a lot of funk.
He was the master of the slow sexy delivery of a vocal that made audiences melt and vinyl pulsate. He was the consummate innovator of a style and delivery of message that was enhanced and personified in the bass play of Larry Graham. His vocals were not just sung but soulfully spoken as a sort of sliding funk that moved listeners as he educated a generation on Family, Righteous Causes, and Love of Music, with a spirit that made you want to get on up and Dance to the Music!”
- Excerpted from “Sly Stone - 80th Birthday,“ JohnLuongoMusic.com
Sly’s much-anticipated autobiography, written with music journalist Ben Greenman, is reportedly due to be published soon.
There has been a resurgence of interest in his career and influence thanks to Questlove’s celebrated documentary Summer of Soul (2021) that showcased the band’s legendary set at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.
After the runaway success of the band’s fourth album Stand! (1969) which sold over three million copies, Sly made a production deal with Atlantic and ran his own short-lived imprint Stone Flower from 1969-70.
He wrote, produced, arranged, and played the music on the Stone Flower release and bona fide funk masterpiece “You're The One” (1970) by Little Sister, who were the Family Stone's backing vocalists.
The trio included his youngest sister Vet Stone, Mary McCreary (who later married Leon Russell and released two classic mid-70s albums with him), and Elva Mouton.
"You're The One" was released in early 1970 and peaked at #4 R&B on 2/28/70. It also crossed over to #22 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Happy 80th Birthday to the legend Sly Stone!
Further info:
“The Hard Road and Hot Music of Sly Stone,” by Bob Ruggiero (review of Sly & The Family Stone: An Oral History by Joel Selvin), Houston Press, 11/10/22
“Small Talk About Sly” (multi-part Sly and the Family Stone oral history documentary-in-progress on YouTube) directed by Greg Zola
#funk #soul #LittleSister #SlyStone