Revolutionary musician Sly Stone Dead at 82

New York (AP) – Sly Stone, the revolutionary musician and dynamic showman whose cunning and the Family Stone family transformed popular music in the sixties and seventy and beyond successes such as “every day of every day”, “Stand!” And “Family Affair,” he has died. He had 82

Stone, born in Sylvester Stewart, had had poor health in recent years. His publicist Carleen Donovan said Monday that Stone died surrounded by family after contending with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other ailments.

Michael Ochs archives through Getty Images

Formed in 1966-67, SLY and Family Stone was the first important group to include men and women in black and white, and well embodied a time when something seemed possible: disturbances and murders, communities and love. The singers screamed, sang, sang and shouted. Music was a frantic horns, fast guitar and locomotive rhythms, a jazz crucible, psychedelic rock, doo-wop, soul and the first rhythms of the funk.

Sly’s time was brief, approximately 1968-1971, but deep. No band captured the euphoria that challenges the seriousness of the Woodstock era or more bravely addressed the accident that followed. Of the first songs as exciting as their titles: “I want to get taller”, “Stand!” – To the sober consequences of “Family Affair” and “Runnin ‘Away”, Sly and Family Stone spoke during a generation if he liked or not what they had to say.

Stone’s group began as a sextet of the Bay area with Sly on keyboards, Larry Graham on bass; Sly’s brother, Freddie, on the guitar; The sister got up in the voices; Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini Horns and Greg errico in the battery. They debuted with the album “A completely new” and obtained the title with their innovative single, “Dance to the Music”. He arrived at Top 10 in April 1968, the week in which Reverend Martin Luther King was killed and helped to launch an era in which the Motown Polish and Stax’s underestimation suddenly seemed from another time.

Photo by Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Directed by Sly Stone, with his leather monkeys and glasses, a mile smile and a mile high, the band dazzled in 1969 at the Woodstock Festival and established a new rhythm on the radio. “Everyday People”, “I Wanna Take You Higher” and other songs were community hymns, non -conformity and a shameless and hopeful spirit, built around phrases such as “different strokes for different people.” The group launched five Top 10 singles, three of them reaching No. 1 and three three million sales albums: “Stand!”, “There is a riot Goin ‘On” and “Gestest Hits”.

For a while, innumerable artists wanted to seem and sound like Sly and Family Stone. The great success of Jackson Five, “I Want You Back” and “I Can’t Get Ary You” of The Temptations were among the many songs in the late 1960s that imitated SLY’s vocal and instrumental arrangements. The historic mixture of Jazz, Rock and Funk of Miles Davis, “Bitches Brew”, was inspired by Sly, while his jazz artist Herbie Hancock even named a song after him.

“He had a way of speaking, going from playful to be honest at will. He took a look, belts and hats and jewelry,” Questlove wrote in The Foreword to Stone’s memory: “Thank you (Falattinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”, called by one of his greatest hits and published through the cheese printing in 2023. ” Questlove infinit. “

In 2025, Questlove launched the documentary “Sly Lives! (Also known as the load of black genius)”.

ABC photo archives through Getty images

Sly’s influence has suffered for decades. The main funk artist of the 1970s, the creator of Parliament-Funkadelic George Clinton, was a stone disciple. Prince, Rick James and black-eyed peas were among the many artists of the 1980s and after SLY, and innumerable rap and hip-hop artists have tried their riffs, from the Beastie Boys to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. A 2005 tribute record included Maroon 5, John Legend and The Roots.

“Sly did so many things so well that he gave me his head,” Clinton wrote. “I could create polished R&B that seemed that it came from an act that had gigrated in clubs for years, and then, in the next breath, it could be as psychedelic as the heaviest rock band.”