Almanac of Story Tellers: Sly Stone

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 15th

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    It is the 74th day of the year, leaving 291 days remaining in 2022.

    On this day in 1943, the funkadelic soul legend Sylvester Stone was born in Denton, Texas.

    Stone was the leader of Sly and the Family Stone, a gender diverse and mixed-race musical group that included several members of his family. Their fusion sound of pyscheldelic rock, sunshine pop, soul, gospel, and jazz with Latin beat lit up  the late 1960s with songs such as Dance to the Music and Everyday People.

    Stone, along with George Clinton and James Brown, helped create the funk sound, deveoping a complex dance beat that's slow and sexy. It inspired musicians such as Prince and Rick James, and rap artists like Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, and LL Cool J.

 

    Stone himself was a musical prodigy, having learned to play the keyboards by age seven, and by the time he was 11, he had also mastered the guitar, drums, and bass. He played in a number of bands in high school in San Francisco, and in 1965 was a disc jockey at several local radio stations, where he promoted soul music but played a variety of musical styles.

    At the same time, he played in his own band, Sly and the Stoners, which he later combined with his brother's group, Freddie and the Stone Souls.

    Stone developed drug-use problems in the early 1970s, and his band's bookings dropped off. He later toured solo and with several groups, with varying degrees of success. He dropped out of sight in 1987, re-emerging at a Sly and the Family Stone tribute at the 2006 Grammy Awards. In 2015, he appeared at a convention honoring Sly and the Family Stone and its legacy, called Love City Connection.