Remembering Sly Stone with Music Historian Rickey Vincent

Episode notes

(Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)

Sly Stone died last month at the age of 82. Sly founded and sang with the funk act Sly and the Family Stone, one of the biggest and most consequential funk bands in the history of modern music. If you know Sly for anything, it’s for hits like “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” “Dance To The Music,” “Family Affair” and about five dozen more. Between 1968 and 1973, Sly and the Family Stone went on an unparalleled run.

And then… the faucet started to shut off. He cut a handful of other records in the  late 70s and early 80s, wouldn’t show up to shows and eventually quit performing altogether. He eventually faded from the public eye altogether. By 2011, blogs reported that Sly was living out of a van in LA. Sly was a hard guy to reach later in his life, and an even tougher guy to read. However, when he passed last month, nobody talked about the dropped gigs or the lurid tabloid stories. We all listened to his music, we danced, we cried and we felt better.

Rickey Vincent is a music historian who’s made a career out of studying funk and soul music – including the work of Sly Stone. Rickey teaches at UC Berkeley and he’s also a DJ on KPFA up in the East Bay. He joined us to chat about Sly Stone, his legacy, what made him special, and why there’ll never be another like Sly again.