I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone by Jeff Kaliss Page B

it," he recounts. "And that hair goes right up on my arm.
I go, `Oh shit, does this sound good!' And I go and sit down.
They're just starting, but they're good. They were doing everybody
else's music, they hadn't gone out on their own yet, but what they
were covering was better than the originals, no doubt about it.
Freddie singing `Try a Little Tenderness'? Whew! They could play!
So I hired 'em that night."
    The Cathedral and its opening act, Sly & the Family Stone,
were aggressively promoted by Rich through newspaper and radio
advertising. He assumed there might not be widespread familiarity with radio jock Sly as a musician. On opening night-December 16, 1966-there was a long line to get into the new club. And
there was plenty for the patrons of the early show, many of them
teens, to smile about as they looked around after entering. "The
whole place was red-flocked wallpaper, crystal chandeliers, and it
had a real elegance about it," says Rich, about the design elements
he'd retained from the previous owners. He'd added a stained-glass
display inside a planter box, spelling out L-O-V-E. "We were capturing a little of the Haight-Ashbury, but this was not a hippie
place. And if you look at [later] photographs of the Cathedral, kids
dancing, you can see how appropriately dressed they are, for the
time."
    Both the dancing teens and the older sit-down crowd who
took their place for the after-hours session, starting at about 2:00
a.m., seemed delighted with the brand-new Family Stone band,
and the feeling seemed mutual. In subsequent bookings, on regular Friday and Saturday nights during the first half of 1967, the
band took to opening its shows with the Spencer Davis Group's
recent hit, "Gimme Some Lovin'," repeating the appreciative mes sage, "So glad you made it!" "If you talk to the kids," says Rich,
referring to the Family Stone as if they still were the youngsters he
shepherded, "they might tell you it was the best place they ever
played, for their own entertainment and satisfaction.... And that
was probably some of the best they ever sounded."

    Sly had taken notice of what Rich had done as manager of the
Beau Brummels, and he approached the club owner about assuming that function for the Family Stone. Rich recalled his Brummels
experience in a less positive light, but ultimately gave in to Sly's
request. Word got around that bookings at the Cathedral alongside the Family Stone could help launch other new acts, including
the young Santana Blues Band from San Francisco's Mission district. "I gave Carlos seventy-five dollars a night, and I gave Sly a
hundred, 'cause I was the manager and had to get my commission." Rich remembers. The audience paid about two dollars a
head to see this pre-legend double bill.
    In the early months at the Cathedral, repeat customers were
delighted with the Family Stone's creative covers of material from
the soul and R & B side of the rock spectrum. "We did things like
`Shotgun' and `Try a Little Tenderness,"' says Jerry Martini,
"because we'd worked out a show thing where we'd walk around
the room, dancing and playing tambourines." Larry's baritone
voice effectively channeled Lou Rawls's on the soulful "Tobacco
Road" and "The Shadow of Your Smile." "But we started immediately adding original songs, one by one," Jerry continues. "We even
practiced dialogue, a little acting. I remember Freddie and Larry
on a [Sly-penned] song that Larry sang, called `Let Me Hear It
from You.' They would talk to each other and say, `I heard my girlfriend's gonna break up with me, but I wanna hear it from you.' It
went over really well, personal life things." (The song was later
included on the band's debut album, A Whole New Thing, but without the dramatic spoken intro.) Jerry's commitment to the
new group involved major changes in his own personal life,
including forsaking a lucrative engagement with another band and
moving in with his wife's family to minimize