On 6/9/2025 4:49 PM, Bruce wrote:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/sly-stone-funk-music-pioneer-and- leader-of-sly-and-the-family-stone-dies-at-82/ar-AA1GnSny? ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=5b4d4f6d6334436f82a64108579ce97f&ei=17
Yes, he made records in this era.
1959
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whZ0SCHcb2A
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[He died of COPD, age 82.]
Sylvester Stewart was born in Denton, Texas, on March 15, 1943, the
second of Alpha and K.C. Stewart’s five children. Soon after, the family moved west to Vallejo, Calif., north of San Francisco, where Mr. Stewart
worked as a cleaner and in maintenance at a department store. The couple
raised their children in the Pentecostal Church, where they first became immersed in music.
In 1952, the Stewart Family Four, a vocal group consisting of Sylvester
and three of his siblings, released a gospel single, “On the
Battlefield,” with “Walking in Jesus’s Name” on the flip side. The record planted the seeds of the group harmonies for which the Family
Stone would become known.
Even as a child, Sylvester, who sang lead, was the star. “People were hollering and wanting to touch him,” his mother recalled of the group’s early performances, when he was as young as 5. “You had to hold them
back sometimes.”
It went both ways: Mr. Stone recalled his mother saying that he really
came alive in front of a crowd. “It they didn’t respond, I would cry,”
he wrote.
In high school, Mr. Stone — who picked up the nickname Sly thanks to a friend’s misspelling of his first name — was a hot commodity as a
guitarist for local doo-wop groups. He learned new instruments with ease
and moved from a Black band, the Webs, to a more successful mixed-race
act, the Viscaynes, with whom he released a handful of singles and
tasted his first morsels of industry buzz.
After a brief stint studying music theory, on and off, at Vallejo Junior College, Mr. Stone, by then a fledgling commodity in the flourishing Bay
Area music scene, was tapped by some enterprising disc jockeys to work
as a producer for their new label, Autumn Records. There, he helped
write Bobby Freeman’s “C’mon and Swim,” which became a Top 10 hit in 1964 and the catalyst of a dance craze.
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