Sly and the Family Stone

The received wisdom on Sly and the Family Stone runs something like this: hippie-era breakers of racial and gender boundaries hit the charts with gloriously optimistic hits like "Dance to the Music" and "Everyday People," immediately followed by a swift drug-fueled decline punctuated by the bad-trip epic There's A Riot Goin' On. That simplification doesn't quite tell the whole story, however: morbid themes flicker through even the upbeat early LPs, and although much of Riot is indeed heavy sledding, the hit singles "Family Affair" and "Runnin' Away" showed that Sly's pop genius had not yet completely abandoned him. A working musician since childhood, Sylvester Stewart made his name both as the house producer at San Francisco indie Autumn Records (where he helmed hits like The Beau Brummels' 1965 classic "Laugh Laugh") and as a local disc jockey whose introduction of the Beatles and Rolling Stones into R&B-oriented playlists was an early pointer to his future plans. After Sly and the Family Stone formed in 1967, their blend of soul and psychedelia was immediately influential to hip tastemakers, but unlike other pioneers of the style like Love or Jimi Hendrix, they were equally beloved by teenyboppers, scoring 9 Top 40 hits between 1968 and '74. Though decades of comeback rumors that invariably fizzle due to Sly's mental and chemical problems have colored perceptions of the band, artists from George Clinton and Prince to The Negro Problem and The Roots owe much to Sly Stone's musical cross-pollination.