Sly Stone, leader of funk revolutionaries Sly and the Family Stone, dies at 82

By HILLEL ITALIE NEW YORK AP Sly Stone the revolutionary musician and dynamic showman whose Sly and the Family Stone transformed popular music in the s and s and beyond with such hits as Everyday People Stand and Family Affair has died He was Related Articles Small plane carrying six people crashes off the San Diego coast The present day in History June Secretariat wins Triple Crown in record time Mike Johnson downplays Musk s influence and says Republicans will pass Trump s tax and budget bill New disputes emerge ahead of U S -China bargain talks in London Chinese hackers and user lapses turn smartphones into a mobile assurance predicament Stone born Sylvester Stewart had been in poor healthcare in contemporary years His publicist Carleen Donovan explained Monday that Stone died surrounded by family after contending with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and other ailments Formed in - Sly and the Family Stone was the first major group to include Black and white men and women and well embodied a time when anything seemed viable riots and assassinations communes and love-ins The singers screeched chanted crooned and hollered The music was a blowout of frantic horns rapid-fire guitar and locomotive rhythms a melting pot of jazz psychedelic rock doo-wop soul and the early grooves of funk Sly s time on top was brief roughly from - but profound No band better captured the gravity-defying euphoria of the Woodstock era or more bravely addressed the crash which followed From early songs as rousing as their titles I Want To Take You Higher Stand to the sober aftermath of Family Affair and Runnin Away Sly and the Family Stone spoke for a generation whether or not it liked what they had to say Stone s group began as a Bay Area sextet featuring Sly on keyboards Larry Graham on bass Sly s brother Freddie on guitar sister Rose on vocals Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini horns and Greg Errico on drums They debuted with the album A Whole New Thing and earned the title with their breakthrough single Dance to the Music It hit the top in April the week the Rev Martin Luther King was murdered and helped launch an era when the polish of Motown and the understatement of Stax suddenly seemed of another time FILE Sly Stone from the group Sly and the Family Stone performs at the th Annual Grammy Awards on Feb in Los Angeles AP Photo Mark J Terrill File FILE Rock star Sylvester Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone April AP Photo File Show Caption of FILE Sly Stone from the group Sly and the Family Stone performs at the th Annual Grammy Awards on Feb in Los Angeles AP Photo Mark J Terrill File Expand Led by Sly Stone with his leather jumpsuits and goggle shades mile-wide grin and mile-high Afro the band dazzled in at the Woodstock festival and set a new pace on the radio Everyday People I Wanna Take You Higher and other songs were anthems of region non-conformity and a brash and hopeful spirit built around such catchphrases as different strokes for different folks The group published five top singles three of them hitting No and three million-selling albums Stand There s a Riot Goin On and Greatest Hits For a time countless performers requested to look and sound like Sly and the Family Stone The Jackson Five s breakthrough hit I Want You Back and the Temptations I Can t Get Next to You were among the a great number of songs from the late s that mimicked Sly s vocal and instrumental arrangements Miles Davis landmark blend of jazz rock and funk Bitches Brew was inspired in part by Sly while fellow jazz artist Herbie Hancock even named a song after him He had a way of talking moving from playful to earnest at will He had a look belts and hats and jewelry Questlove wrote in the foreword to Stone s memoir Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin named for one of his biggest hits and published through Questlove s imprint in He was a special episode cooler than everything around him by a factor of infinity In Questlove disclosed the documentary Sly Lives aka The Burden of Black Genius Sly s influence has endured for decades The top funk artist of the s Parliament-Funkadelic creator George Clinton was a Stone disciple Prince Rick James and the Black-Eyed Peas were among the a multitude of performers from the s and after influenced by Sly and countless rap and hip-hop artists have sampled his riffs from the Beastie Boys to Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg A tribute record included Maroon John Legend and the Roots Sly did so plenty of things so well that he turned my head all the way around Clinton once wrote He could create polished R B that sounded like it came from an act that had gigged at clubs for years and then in the next breath he could be as psychedelic as the heaviest rock band