I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone Read Online Free PDF

still one among a roomful of music students,
Sly's teacher noted that his star pupil "stood out, of course, as
being intelligent and personable but with a complete anxiety to
learn. He was not acquainted, had not had a chance, with the
physics of music, acoustics, the overtone series, which the chord
progressions of Bach are based on. All of this was new to this gentleman, and it fascinated him. When it came to such things as style
and form and history, it's what he wanted to know."
    As a role model for David and Sly, "Bach was an excellent ear
man," the teacher points out. The eighteenth-century composer
"could walk into a cathedral and say, `The sound will come over
that beam and across the ceiling, and be heard over there.' That
was all new to Sly." However, Sly would display similar perception
and attention to detail in his later work, orchestrating, arranging,
and recording in the studio.
    Sly's love of learning had him raising his hand repeatedly in
class and remaining with more questions after other students had
been dismissed. He shuffled attentively through not only Western classics but also his teacher's strongest suit, jazz. "We laughed
about the song [famed jazz bassist] Ray Brown wrote, `The Gravy
Waltz,"' David recalls merrily. "When we got to the bridge, neither
he nor I could remember it. He came back in the next day or two
and said, `I got the bridge!' and he hummed it out. That was something he did for me. When I think back, he wasn't listening as
much as he was rehearsing, playing, and writing [in his mind's
ear]."

    Both David and Sly probably would have been very happy to
prolong their mutual learning experience. But the day came when
Sly had to leave academia for other adventures. "I didn't want to
say much, I was listening," recalls the teacher about Sly's actual day
of departure. "And he said, `Don't worry, I'll be back to see you, in
a limousine full of girls: And [several years later], he was!"
    IT WAS A FORTUITOUS TIME and place for Sly to be launching
a career in popular music. He and the baby boomers, just a few
years his junior, were listening to the radio, buying what they heard
there, and going out to dance to the music, which in 1961 included
Ben E. King's wistful "Stand by Me" and "Spanish Harlem," Ray
Charles's imperative "Hit the Road Jack," Sam Cooke's smoothly
polished "Cupid," and such melodramatic marvels as "Running
Scared" by Roy Orbison and "Runaway" by Del Shannon. That was
also the year Chubby Checker launched non-contact but sinuous
dancing to "The Twist." Meanwhile, Berry Gordy had founded his
prolific Motown label, and former Georgia cotton picker and
shoe-shine boy James Brown, who'd been gigging and recording
since the mid-1950s, began to earn a lucrative reputation as "the
hardest working man in show business."

    Sly could hardly wait to join this scene where blacks were
hardly a minority. KYA-AM was among the most popular San
Francisco rock stations in the early '60s. It had also proven a
benign refuge for disc jockeys and close friends Tom "Big Daddy"
Donahue and Bob Mitchell, who'd reportedly fled west from Pittsburgh's WIBG under threat of federal prosecution for the not
uncommon practice of taking payola (basing radio playlists on
bribes from record companies). "They had the East Coast radio
technique down," comments Alec Palao, a rock archivist who has
produced compilations of Sly's pre-Family recordings. "Donahue
in particular had an incredible presence on the radio. He had this
deep voice and this commanding manner," issuing from a jumbosize body, "and he was talking the argot of the time, he had a lot
of phrases. He [and Mitchell] took over KYA, and once they got
that going, they really sent the ratings up.... They became very
powerful as guys that would spot a hit and play it to death, 'breaking' it. That's how KYA got a reputation as a 'break' station [open
to regional surprises and sudden crazes]."
    The