Various Artists - Listen To The Voices: Sly Stone In The Studio 1965-1970 Various Artists

Of every instrument that Sly Stone has mastered during his long and colourful career in music, perhaps the most significant is the recording studio. 20 years before the advent of computer-based recording, this maverick was pushing available recording technology to its limit. When he finally tired of the restrictions imposed by official facilities, Sly built his own, to satisfy his creative urge when, where and how he saw fit. It was the ultimate manifestation of the impulse that had transformed Sylvester Stewart of Vallejo, California into Sly Stone, titan of popular music.

Sly drew from gospel, R&B, rock, jazz, pop, folk rock, psychedelia and everything in-between, married them to a positive outlook tinged with humour, and stayed focused on achieving his goals, using the tools he had. In doing this, Sly Stone liberated black music - rhythmically, lyrically, sonically - but he did it all within the context of the song. That is the reason Sly’s music has been covered by the Beach Boys, why Sinatra accorded him respect, why Miles Davis would wait hours in the studio for a chance to watch him at work.

“Listen To The Voices” is the sequel to Ace’s earlier survey of Sly’s musical progression, “Precious Stone: Sly Stone In The Studio 1963-65”. It’s a project that has been in my back pocket for some time, for, as a terminal Sly freak, I’ve ransacked not just studios, but tape vaults, collector’s stashes and beyond, hunting for any and all evidence of this singular artists creativity, because every last scrap provides another clue, another revelation or, in most cases, just reconfirms Sly’s genius. His funky 1966 demo of ‘You Really Got Me’ came from a bank vault near the Mexican border; an unlikely H.B. Barnum was the source of the folk-punk ‘Underdog’ that Sly recorded with the Beau Brummels in October 1965. And my good pals Edwin and Arno Konings, the Dutch detectives whose forthcoming book “Thank You” will finally give Sly the definitive biography he deserves, came up with an acetate of the brilliant ‘Man Does Not Live’ – written for Walter Jackson in 1968 but performed here by the Family Stone with a touching, heartbreaking dollop of pure soul.