I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone by Jeff Kaliss

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Snow, for one, launched a successful career on vocals and trumpet
in 1918-it's evident that female instrumentalists, aside from
occasional pianists and guitarists, were rare in rock, and that Cynthia had acquired a strong, spirited, and accurate horn technique
in her hometown of Sacramento. "Cynthia," wrote Sly in Dance to
the Music's original liner notes, "is one of the most talented trumpets alive and that includes guys!" Jerry himself, who'd played
Vegas and overseas venues before anybody else in the Family Stone, was a sophisticated jazz-wise reedman. Together he and
Cynthia often gave the impression of a much larger brass section.

    Larry laid down his trademark down-and-dirty thumpin' and
pluckin' bass, connected through new effects units designed for
guitars-fuzz and wah-wah pedals, which altered the instrument's
signal to give it a fat or stinging "underwater" tone. Larry's taut,
snappy slaps of his Fender Jazz and Vox Constellation basses, making use of melody as rhythm, was a stimulating change-up from
the happy bass burble of Paul McCartney or James Jamerson, and
he influenced imitators for decades to come.
    Freddie possessed, in the opinion of bandmate Jerry, "just
about the most innovative guitar style of all.... You ask any of the
modern-day rhythm guitarists who they listen to, and Freddie
Stone, or Freddie Stewart, would be at the top of the list. There's
no funkier or better rhythm guitar player."
    His brother Sly, having willed the guitar function to Freddie,
had quickly mastered a variety of keyboards, and was heard on
both joyful and soulful organ passages throughout the album, with
sister Rose partnering prettily on keyboards and solo and harmonized vocals. Sly variously made use of a Farfisa Professional,
Yamahas of various years, a Vox Continental, and often a classic
Hammond B-3. Greg powerfully and confidently propelled the
rhythm, without encroaching on Larry's standout rumbles. "Greg
had a drumming style that really complemented what I was
doing," Larry testified to Bass Player. "We never had any collisions.
It wouldn't have worked if he filled up a lot of space, which is what
everybody else was doing at the time.... Greg plays on the money;
he doesn't rush or lag."
    It took the newly invigorated band a few months to get heard
beyond 52nd Street. But when the second album's title tune was released as a single in the dawn of the new year, 1968, it took hold
of the hearts, minds, and wallets of the general public on both
coasts, in between, and around the globe. It climbed to number 8
on the Billboard pop chart and to number 7 in the United Kingdom. Out on the West Coast, "Dance to the Music" caught up with
young would-be rock authority Joel Selvin on a blissful Saturday
morning, while he was driving down the Eastshore Freeway near
Berkeley with the radio on. "And it's Sly, sitting in on KDIA again,"
Joel remembers. "He hasn't been on in maybe a year. Wow, Sly!
And he's all pumped up, as usual, and he's got his record, and he
puts it on.... It was if something had come from outer space! It
was so far beyond anything we had heard on the radio up to that
point: the breakdown of the a cappella voices, the way the vocals
were voiced, Larry Graham's boom-boom-boom, the way it was
all pieced together. It was just literally the way I said in my book:
There was black music before Sly Stone, and black music after Sly
Stone. A watershed event, and that was the record."

    Evocative of the congregational celebrations in which the
Stewart children had performed on childhood Sundays, "Dance to
the Music" inspired the primal directive of the tune's title, but also
showcased the newly visible act in a manner unusual in rock and
most other genres of pop music. Within the standard three-minute
format of a radio single, individual instruments were introduced,
a quote from Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally" was inserted in
homage, and a couple of