News RSS

Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll see tomorrow if you pick up the brand new Higher! box set!

The Guardian newspaper has an exclusive stream of “I Get High On You,” one of the rare tracks included on Higher!, the 4-CD Sly & The Family Stone box set to be released August 27. Getting on for twice the length of the original – which appeared on Sly’s 1975 album High on You – it was recorded back in 1967 and begins with multi-layered vocals before embarking on something more woozy and psychedelic than the original.

“I haven’t heard this since the day we cut it,” says drummer Greg Errico. “These sessions were recorded between the first demos and those for the first album, Underdog and so forth. I recall the beginning with the stacked voices … you can tell we are experimenting with different stuff, searching for a sound. I can hear a lot of that in there.”

Read more and listen to “I Get High On You” at The Guardian.

“I think he was looking for good musicians, and he knew quite a few. He sees the heart of a person.”

That’s how Cynthia Robinson, founding member of Sly & The Family Stone, characterizes the charismatic frontman’s choice of backing players. The band, which pioneered a blend of funk, soul, jazz and pop, began in 1960s San Francisco as a kind of blended family: black and white, men and women.

It was something of a first for a major American rock band, whose legacy remains strong and is celebrated on a new box set titled Higher! Robinson, the band’s trumpet player, says she doesn’t think race or gender entered into decisions surrounding the lineup. Saxophone player Jerry Martini, however, says he believes that Stone’s choice of bandmates was intentional.

“I said, ‘You know, I know a lot of other African-American sax players that can just burn me.’ He goes, ‘But you’re what I wanted,'” Martini says. “I didn’t say, ‘Is it ’cause I’m white?’ or anything like that. But I just saw him as a visionary person who knew the group that he put together represented a lot of society.”

Read more and listen to the report at NPR.

Exclusively at SPIN, you can listen to one of the unreleased tracks from Higher!, the 4-CD Sly & The Family Stone box set in stores August 27. Recorded during the Dance to the Music album sessions in July of 1967, the cut “Life of Fortune and Fame” starts off slowly but soon turns into a fully realized rock/soul fusion that was left, surprisingly, in the vaults up until now. It’s a song that Sly revisited several times early in his career.

Listen to “Life of Fortune and Fame” now at SPIN.

Photo credit: Vernon L. Smith