Product Description

For all the multi-cultural hippie freedom Sly and the Family Stone stood for in their pre-RIOT glory days, frontman SlyStone was smart and talented enough to know that it was through catchy pop singles that his band's message would gain its widest dissemination. All 11 of Sly and the Family Stone's Top 40 hits are here (some of which, like "Hot Fun in the Summertime" and "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" were never on LPs back in the day), along with nearly every track from both of the band's career high point albums, 1969'sSTAND and 1971's THERE'S A RIOT GOIN' ON. Six cuts from 1973's FRESH represent that excellent, underrated album (and the sophisticated down-tempo funk Sly was pioneering in the early '70s). Overall, Sly and the Family Stone's signature sound, a mixture of infectious energy, ebullient melodic hooks,and heavy funk beats, was one of the most distinctive of its era, and went on to directly influence everyone from MilesDavis to Prince. Moreover, the music on ESSENTIAL is celebratory, superbly crafted, and deeply enduring. It provides a vibrant retrospective of one of the most important artists of the '60s and '70s.

Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Underdog
2. I Cannot Make It
3. Dance To The Music
4. Are You Ready?
5. Fun
6. M'Lady
7. Life
8. Love City
9. Stand!
10. Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey
11. I Want To Take You Higher
12. Somebody's Watching You
13. Sing A Simple Song
14. Everyday People
15. You Can Make It If You Try
16. Hot Fun In The Summertime
17. Everybody Is A Star
18. Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

Disc 2:

1. Family Affair
2. Luv N' Haight
3. Poet
4. (You Caught Me) Smilin'
5. Runnin' Away
6. Brave & Strong
7. Just Like A Baby
8. Thank You For Talkin' To Me, Africa
9. In Time
10. If You Want Me To Stay
11. Frisky
12. Skin I'm In
13. Babies Makin' Babies
14. If It Were Left Up To Me
15. Time For Livin'
16. Loose Booty
17. I Get High On You

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3605 in Music
• Released on: 2003-04-07
• Number of discs: 2

Amazon.co.uk Review
Long before Michael Jackson and Prince became superstars by fusing rhythmic soul with rock's sense of scale and ambition, a former northern California deejay and producer named Sylvester Stewart took the vaunted musical utopianism of the 60s and forged it into the cross-cultural, ass-shaking, genre-bending groove monster that was Sly and the Family Stone. James Brown may have invented funk, but S&TFS masterfully tooled and supercharged it into mass-acceptance. No mere greatest hits collection (though they're all here in digitally remastered glory), this 35-track, double-disc anthology delves deeper into the handful of seminal albums the band produced before its leaders' long, troubling slide into drug abuse and oblivion. Given the chronological development, there's a sense here that Stewart/Stone's problems paralleled the increasingly militant and hard-edged stance the band took on albums like the uncompromising classic There's a Riot Going On. Propelled by Larry Graham's locomotive bass lines and accented by rousing horns, Sly and company swooped from the heights of 1969's hit-laden "Stand" towards a darker and more unsettling decade ahead. Few bands have soared higher--or fallen as far. --Jerry McCulley

Customer Reviews

There's space for even more.
Really great double cd compilation, which succeeds in drawing in all the main S&TFS highlights. I will, however, be very mean and give this only a four-star rating. You'll think i'm being a bit churlish, but it's mainly because of a relatively ungenerous playing time of about 60 minutes per disc. In other words, there was plenty of room for more. There was room for "Sex Machine" from "Stand!", or the remaining tracks from "Riot". Granted, it's absolutely not in the record company's interests to do this, and i will readily admit to being terribly unreasonable. But it's never nice to see that a company is not giving the best value-for-money.

However, in spite of the relatively disappointing running time, this double cd would still probably represent the best overall S&TFS compilation on the market

Superb Sly compilation
This 2CD set is a near-perfect primer for Sly & The Family Stone neophytes,as it contains pretty much all the best music they ever recorded-including most of their undisputed masterpiece There's A Riot Goin' On (Family Affair,Thank You For Talkin' To Me,Africa,etc).
The miracle of this best of is that while this music is of it's time (using Frere Jacques as an intro is an idea that only would have been used in the late sixties) it is also timeless,and in this genre only James Brown,Curtis Mayfield and Parliament/Funkadelic can claim to have as great a back catalogue.

let the music take you higher
What a great compilation. Not only are Sly and the Family Stone Phat but it has 35 songs on it. What makes this band such a force in music is not only because of their extremely artistic innovation and eccletic song disparity but the lyrics abilities to be so simple but at the same time seem to tell so much about yourself and human life.
This is the best Compilation I've bought in a long time.