I Want to Take You Higher_ The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone - Jeff Kaliss [3]
Making it happen was a slower, tougher process. Although there were feature pieces and reviews in periodicals from the band's heyday, there had been little since, and no biography per se aside from Joel Selvin's Oral History, a compendium of quotes published in 1998. I went through this material with a skeptical eye for bias, recognizing that there was little to be found in the way of substantial interviews with Sly himself. I did interview those few persons intimately involved with the story who were still alive and willing to talk about it, and I eventually got to Sly.
What emerged from all this was a portrait of a passionate talent-unpredictable, uncontrollable, and fantastic-which had been based in family, community, and friendship, and then extended into the wider world. The world was entertained, and arguably bettered, by its embrace of Sly & the Family Stone. The portrait also reflected on the peculiar and often perverse interdependence of media and celebrity, and on the pervasive influence that both have on the culture at large, which is all of us. Fame and fortune seemed to ultimately aggravate Sly's compromise of his personal integrity and of the integrity of his group.
I came to realize that the faith of Sly's blood family and friends, and that of his musical Family, had survived the decades of estrangement and resentment. Despite old bummers, these people seemed eager to see themselves now as part of a more positive and forward-looking legacy, more about making memorable music, both then and now. Looking back on Sly's story, however large and distorted the images may have become, we all can find familiar facets of our own humanity, hopes, challenges, mistakes, and achievements. I wish I could, Sly had sung in "If You Want Me to Stay," get the message over to you now. In Sly's many messages, and throughout this book, there are glitters of introspection and wisdom, as well as the makings of a great soundtrack.
-JEFF KALISS
Note on Style
O REFLECT THE FRIENDLY and informal spirit of a family and a band, first names are used throughout the book after the initial use, or re-establishing uses, of each full name. Generally, the present tense is used with quotes from this author's interviews, and the past tense with quotes originating elsewhere, in order to distinguish the sources and to help forestall misunderstandings. The only exceptions to this usage comes in the stand-alone descriptions, in the past tense, of the author's two in-person interviews with Sly, and in the scene of Sly's return performance in 2007, where the author is clearly identified and the present tense would have proven awkward.
I WANT
TO TAKE YOU
HIGHER
Get Your
Livin' Down
1943-1961
You live your life religiously, and you live your life with mankind, trying to make sure that you can deal with this world while you're here.
-JAMES BROWN
1993 interview with Jeff Kaliss
HE STEWART FAMILY OF Vallejo, California, had a reputation for making music, both in their own house and in several houses of the Lord. The earliest recording of Sylvester Stewart, later known as Sly, was a seven-inch 45-rpm disc with "On the Battlefield of the Lord" on one side and "Walking in Jesus' Name" on the other. It was recorded in 1952, on the recommendation of a local church official, when Sylvester was nine. He sang lead vocals alongside brother Freddie and sisters Loretta and Rose, and it was in the family, and their church, that Sylvester found his earliest musical and spiritual inspiration.
The family made occasional road trips to Denton, in northern Texas, to stay with relatives, perform in area churches, and peddle their recordings. Those travels brought the kids' mother, Alpha, back to her own roots as a daughter of the Haynes family, founders of the very musical St. Andrew Church of God in Christ, in Denton. The role of music in the sect, the largest Pentecostal group in America, seems