I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone by Jeff Kaliss
Authors: Jeff Kaliss
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and Tina Turner.
When Sly first heard him, Larry was gigging with his mother, Dell,
a singer and pianist. That act had shrunk from a trio to a duo,
requiring Larry to man both the organ and the guitar. When the
organ broke down and the act still needed low registers, the resourceful Larry rented a St. George electric bass guitar to fill in.
"I wasn't interested in learning the so-called correct overhand style
of playing bass, because in my head I was going back to guitar, anyway," Larry later told Bass Player magazine.
The necessity of properly accompanying his mother inspired
Larry's reputed invention of what has been variously called the
slap-pop or thump `n' pluck technique, later immensely influential on rock, funk, and jazz bassists. Most electric bassists up to that
time had preferred the softer, rounder tones of conventional finger-style and picking methods. But Larry, as he described it to Bass
Player, "would thump the strings with my thumb to make up for
the bass drum, and pluck the strings with my fingers to make up
for the backbeat snare drum," thus replacing two missing drums
with one stringed instrument.
Sly and Freddie also assessed the talent manifest at each other's
shows, and they frequented the Condor, where Sly's pal Jerry Martini was still blowing sax behind George & Teddy. Jerry incorporated the influences of soulful jazz giants Gene Ammons and
Sonny Stitt. But he now says, "One of the reasons that attracted Sly
to my playing was that I emulated [R & B innovator] Junior Walker
more than any other white boy in town. Because [the others] were
all trying to sound like Art Pepper." In effect, Sly needed a representative of the funky sass of Walker more than the post-bop jazz
artistry of Pepper.
Greg Errico came to Urbano Drive in December 1966 for what
he thought was another Stone Souls rehearsal. He describes the
sequence of his knocking, Sly's mom, Alpha, opening the door, and
the subsequent interchanges: "'Where's Freddie?"Well, he's in the
kitchen with Sly, eating chicken.' I went to the kitchen and looked
around. `Where's everybody, are we rehearsing tonight?' I said hi
to Sly, he was the radio DJ. `We're starting a new group tonight. You wanna do it?"Well, I'm here.' I was just joking around. I was
looking for the rest of the Stone Souls. But Sly was already looking out for one more attempt at what he had in mind." Greg later
learned that he had actually been the second choice for drummer,
after a failed attempt to recruit Bartholomew "Frosty" SmithFrost, accompanist to Lee Michaels, a Hammond organ master
popular around the Bay Area and later signed to A&M.
The group that assembled on that fateful afternoon on Urbano
Drive to realize what Sly had in mind included brother Freddie,
Greg Errico, Larry Graham, and Cynthia Robinson. There's no
known recording of what went down in that basement, but it can
be inferred, from what the players looked and sounded like on
record and in live performance not all that much later, that it must
have been thrilling and unprecedented in pop music.
Recalling the day for Joel Selvin, Cynthia noted that the musicians found Sly ready with "punching funky" arrangements of Top
40 songs, which he expected to later intersperse with his own original compositions in live sets. Larry, she says, raised a question
about group leadership, which Sly met with an affirmation of his
sole right to lead. (The potential for a standoff between these two
persisted for years.) The group's name was a catchy mutation, with
druggy undertones, of the pseudo-surnames both Stewarts had
started performing under, as well as a statement of what would be
the group's ethos, with Sly as unquestioned head of a tight-knit
"Family."
The brand-new Family Stone's quest for a gig took them
beyond the city limits and into the sights of the enterprising Rich
Romanello, a couple of dozen miles down the San Francisco
Peninsula. A few years Sly's senior, Rich had
When Sly first heard him, Larry was gigging with his mother, Dell,
a singer and pianist. That act had shrunk from a trio to a duo,
requiring Larry to man both the organ and the guitar. When the
organ broke down and the act still needed low registers, the resourceful Larry rented a St. George electric bass guitar to fill in.
"I wasn't interested in learning the so-called correct overhand style
of playing bass, because in my head I was going back to guitar, anyway," Larry later told Bass Player magazine.
The necessity of properly accompanying his mother inspired
Larry's reputed invention of what has been variously called the
slap-pop or thump `n' pluck technique, later immensely influential on rock, funk, and jazz bassists. Most electric bassists up to that
time had preferred the softer, rounder tones of conventional finger-style and picking methods. But Larry, as he described it to Bass
Player, "would thump the strings with my thumb to make up for
the bass drum, and pluck the strings with my fingers to make up
for the backbeat snare drum," thus replacing two missing drums
with one stringed instrument.
Sly and Freddie also assessed the talent manifest at each other's
shows, and they frequented the Condor, where Sly's pal Jerry Martini was still blowing sax behind George & Teddy. Jerry incorporated the influences of soulful jazz giants Gene Ammons and
Sonny Stitt. But he now says, "One of the reasons that attracted Sly
to my playing was that I emulated [R & B innovator] Junior Walker
more than any other white boy in town. Because [the others] were
all trying to sound like Art Pepper." In effect, Sly needed a representative of the funky sass of Walker more than the post-bop jazz
artistry of Pepper.
Greg Errico came to Urbano Drive in December 1966 for what
he thought was another Stone Souls rehearsal. He describes the
sequence of his knocking, Sly's mom, Alpha, opening the door, and
the subsequent interchanges: "'Where's Freddie?"Well, he's in the
kitchen with Sly, eating chicken.' I went to the kitchen and looked
around. `Where's everybody, are we rehearsing tonight?' I said hi
to Sly, he was the radio DJ. `We're starting a new group tonight. You wanna do it?"Well, I'm here.' I was just joking around. I was
looking for the rest of the Stone Souls. But Sly was already looking out for one more attempt at what he had in mind." Greg later
learned that he had actually been the second choice for drummer,
after a failed attempt to recruit Bartholomew "Frosty" SmithFrost, accompanist to Lee Michaels, a Hammond organ master
popular around the Bay Area and later signed to A&M.
The group that assembled on that fateful afternoon on Urbano
Drive to realize what Sly had in mind included brother Freddie,
Greg Errico, Larry Graham, and Cynthia Robinson. There's no
known recording of what went down in that basement, but it can
be inferred, from what the players looked and sounded like on
record and in live performance not all that much later, that it must
have been thrilling and unprecedented in pop music.
Recalling the day for Joel Selvin, Cynthia noted that the musicians found Sly ready with "punching funky" arrangements of Top
40 songs, which he expected to later intersperse with his own original compositions in live sets. Larry, she says, raised a question
about group leadership, which Sly met with an affirmation of his
sole right to lead. (The potential for a standoff between these two
persisted for years.) The group's name was a catchy mutation, with
druggy undertones, of the pseudo-surnames both Stewarts had
started performing under, as well as a statement of what would be
the group's ethos, with Sly as unquestioned head of a tight-knit
"Family."
The brand-new Family Stone's quest for a gig took them
beyond the city limits and into the sights of the enterprising Rich
Romanello, a couple of dozen miles down the San Francisco
Peninsula. A few years Sly's senior, Rich had
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