Stand!

Stand! is the fourth album by soul/funk band Sly and the Family Stone, released on May 3, 1969. Written and produced by lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Sly Stone, Stand! is considered an artistic high-point of the band's career. Released by Epic Records, just before the group's celebrated performance at the Woodstock festival, it became the band's most commercially successful album to date.[6] It includes several well-known songs, among them hit singles, such as "Sing a Simple Song", "I Want to Take You Higher", "Stand!", and "Everyday People". The album was reissued in 1990 on compact disc and vinyl, and again in 2007 as a remastered numbered edition digipack CD with bonus tracks and, in the UK, as only a CD with bonus tracks.

This article is about the Sly & the Family Stone album. For other uses, see Stand (disambiguation).
Stand!
Studio album by
Sly and the Family Stone
ReleasedMay 3, 1969
Recorded1968–1969
StudioPacific High Recording Studios, San Francisco, California
Genre
Length41:27
LabelEpic
ProducerSly Stone
Sly and the Family Stone chronology
Life
(1968)		 Stand!
(1969)		 Greatest Hits
(1970)
Singles from Stand!
  1. "Everyday People" / "Sing a Simple Song"
    Released: November 1968
  2. "Stand!" / "I Want to Take You Higher"
    Released: March 1969

The album sold 500,000 copies in 1969 and was certified gold in sales by the RIAA on December 4 of that year. By 1986 it had sold well over 1 million copies and was certified platinum in sales by the RIAA on November 21 of that same year.[7] It then went on to sell over three million copies, becoming one of the most successful albums of the 1960s.[8] In 2003 the album was ranked number 118 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time,[9] and 121 in a 2012 revised list.[10] In 2015, the album was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for inclusion in the National Recording Registry.[11]

Production

Stand! was recorded after Life, a commercially unsuccessful album. Although the Family Stone's single "Dance to the Music" was a top ten hit in early 1968, none of the band's first three albums reached above 100 on the Billboard 200. Stand! reached number thirteen and launched Sly Stone and his bandmates Freddie Stone, Larry Graham, Rose Stone, Cynthia Robinson, Jerry Martini, and Greg Errico into the pop music mainstream.

Much of the album was recorded in the San Francisco area at Pacific High Recording Studios. The band’s A&R director and photographer Stephen Paley recalled how "together" Sly Stone was while working on Stand!, constantly referring to Walter Piston's Orchestration textbook,[12] unlike his erratic behavior and work after he became dependent upon cocaine within a year of the album's success.[13]

Content

Stand! begins with the title track on which Sly sings lead on "Stand", a mid-tempo number launching into a gospel break for its final forty-nine seconds.[12] Most of the Family Stone was unavailable for the session at which this coda was recorded: Sly, drummer Gregg Errico and horn players Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini were augmented by session players instead. Errico recalls that many liked the gospel extension more than they did the song proper, and that; "People would always ask, 'why didn't you go there and let that be the song?'"[12] The second track, titled "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey", has few lyrics save for the chorus Don't call me "nigger", whitey/Don't call me "whitey", nigger and a single verse sung by Rose Stone. On "I Want to Take You Higher" Freddie Stone, Larry Graham, Rose Stone, and Sly Stone take turns delivering the lead vocal and all seven band-members deliver the shouted backing vocals. Sly Stone, Robinson, Freddie Stone, Graham, and Martini all play instrumental solos.

On "Somebody's Watching You" Sly Stone, Graham, Freddie Stone, and Rose Stone deliver the vocal in unison. The song's slightly pessimistic tone would be expanded upon later in the band's career with "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" and the There's a Riot Goin' On LP,[14] and would be a hit for the Family Stone's vocal group Little Sister, the first Top 40 single to use a drum machine.[15] "Sing a Simple Song" urges the audience to "try a little do re mi fa so la ti do". Diana Ross & the Supremes, The Temptations and The Jackson 5 all recorded it, and the song's guitar riff is heard on Ike & Tina Turner's "Bold Soul Sister" (from The Hunter, 1969), Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys (1970) and Miles Davis' A Tribute to Jack Johnson (1971).

"Everyday People", already a number-one hit single in the United States by the time of the album's release, opens Side B. The most familiar selection on the album, "Everyday People" popularized the expression "different strokes for different folks".[16] Sly Stone, Rose Stone and Cynthia Robinson sing lead and Larry Graham introduces the slap-pop style of bass he expanded on "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)". "Sex Machine" is a thirteen-minute jam that features Sly scatting through amplified distortion and allows each band member a solo. Gregg Errico's drum solo closes the song and the band members are heard bursting into laughter during the final seconds. Stand! concludes with "You Can Make It If You Try", sung by Sly Stone, Freddie Stone, and Larry Graham. Sly Stone instead of Larry Graham played the bass.[17]

Critical reception and legacy
Retrospective professional reviews
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[6]
The Austin Chronicle[18]
The Guardian[19]
MusicHound R&B5/5[20]
PopMatters10/10[21]
Q[22]
Rolling Stone[23]
Stylus MagazineA[24]
Tom HullA[25]
Uncut[26]

Reviewing for Rolling Stone in July 1969, Alec Dubro observed a "very evident sense of moral purpose" in the content and a rawness in its brand of soul music, which he said "depends on sheer energy more than anything else". Overall, he found the album provocative and "effective", recommended "for anyone who can groove on a bunch of very raucous kids charging through a record, telling you exactly what they think whether you want to hear it that way or not."[27] In the same magazine, covering Epic/Legacy's 2007 reissue of the band's catalogue, Robert Christgau said that "Stand! revealed the magnificence of which this band would all too briefly be capable. 'Sex Machine,' which precipitated James Brown's, wah-wahs on a bit, but everything else is etched in Stone, from the equally precipitous 'Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey' to the Chaka Khan fave 'Somebody's Watching You' to, yes you can, 'You Can Make It If You Try.'"[23] Also appraising the reissue campaign, Peter Shapiro wrote in Uncut that Stand! was "the group’s true breakthrough" as its "seamless blend of rock, funk and soul, and the soaring mix of black and white voices, made crossover seem like Utopia." Commenting on the music's historical context, Shapiro added:

At a time when the civil rights coalition was breaking apart, when flower power was mutating into armed struggle, the Family Stone clung desperately to the belief that 'You Can Make it If You Try' and had the gall to deliver the decade's most powerful message of unity as a singsong nursery rhyme. Of course, maybe 'Everyday People' was believable as a nursery rhyme because, on songs like 'Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey' and 'Somebody’s Watching You', Sly watches the '60s dream disintegrate before his eyes.[26]

The Jackson 5 covered both "Stand!" and "Want to Take You Higher" on their album Goin' Back to Indiana.

Rapper Ice-T, Body Count, and Jane's Addiction performed "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" during the 1991 Lollapalooza tour and in the 1993 Perry Farrell film Gift.[28]

Track listing

All songs written, produced and arranged by Sly Stone for Stone Flower Productions.

Side one

  1. "Stand!" – 3:08
  2. "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" – 5:58
  3. "I Want to Take You Higher" – 5:22
  4. "Somebody's Watching You" – 3:20
  5. "Sing a Simple Song" – 3:56

Side two

  1. "Everyday People" – 2:21
  2. "Sex Machine" – 13:45
  3. "You Can Make It If You Try" – 3:37

2007 limited edition CD reissue bonus tracks:

  • "Stand!" (mono single version)
  • "I Want to Take You Higher" (mono single version)
  • "You Can Make It If You Try" (mono single version)
  • "Soul Clappin' II" (previously unreleased)
  • "My Brain (Zig-Zag)" (previously unreleased instrumental)

Personnel
Sly and the Family Stone
Technical
  • Don Puluse, Brian Ross-Myring, Phil Macey – engineering

Chart history

Album
Name Chart (1969–1970) Peak
position
Stand! U.S. Billboard Pop Albums 13
Stand! U.S. Top R&B Albums 3
Stand! Australia (Kent Music Report)[29] 9
"Everyday People" U.S. Billboard Pop Singles 1
"Everyday People" U.S. Billboard R&B Singles 1
"Sing a Simple Song" U.S. Billboard Pop Singles 89
"Sing a Simple Song" U.S. Billboard R&B Singles 28
"Stand!" U.S. Billboard Pop Singles 22
"Stand!" U.S. Billboard R&B Singles 14
"I Want to Take You Higher" U.S. Billboard Pop Singles 38
"I Want to Take You Higher" U.S. Billboard R&B Singles 24

Singles

References
  1. Patrin, Nate (29 August 2013). "Sly and the Family Stone: Higher! Album Review". Pitchfork. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
  2. Abdurraqib, Hanif; Bossenger, A.T.; Pearson, Paul; Terich, Jeff (16 April 2015). "10 Essential Psychedelic Soul Albums". Treble. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  3. Hanson, Michael Stephen (2004). People Get Ready: Race, Place and Political Identity in Post-civil Rights Black Popular Music, 1965-1975. UC Berkeley. p. 124.
  4. Deriso, Nick (3 May 2019). "50 Years Ago: How Sly and the Family Stone Defined an Era With 'Stand'". Ultimate Classic Rock. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
  5. Himes, Geoffrey (May 16, 1990). "Records". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 26, 2021.
  6. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Stand! - Sly & the Family Stone | Songs, Reviews, Credits |". AllMusic. Retrieved 18 January 2005.
  7. "Stand! - Gold & Platinum". RIAA. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  8. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Sly & the Family Stone | Biography & History". AllMusic. Retrieved 18 January 2007.
  9. Levy, Joe; Steven Van Zandt (2006) [2005]. "Stand! - Sly and the Family Stone". Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (3rd ed.). London: Turnaround. ISBN 1-932958-61-4. OCLC 70672814. Retrieved 16 August 2008.
  10. "500 Greatest Albums of All Time Rolling Stone's definitive list of the 500 greatest albums of all time". Rolling Stone. 31 May 2012. Retrieved 19 September 2019.
  11. "National Recording Registry To "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive"". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.
  12. Selvin, Joel (1998), pp. 69–71
  13. Selvin, Joel (1998), pp. 113–115
  14. Greenwald, Matthew. "Somebody's Watching You - Sly & the Family Stone | Song Info". AllMusic. Retrieved 5 February 2007.
  15. "Introduction to Sly, Little Sister and the Family Stone". Sly's Lil Sis/Little Sister Website. Archived from the original on 7 April 2017. Retrieved 18 January 2007.
  16. Kaliss, Jeff. "Different strokes for different folks". There1.com. Archived from the original on 12 February 2006. Retrieved 18 January 2007.
  17. Selvin, Joel (1998), pp. 132
  18. "Sly & the Family Stone: The Collection Album Review". www.austinchronicle.com.
  19. Petridis, Alexis (5 April 2007). "CDs: Sly and the Family Stone, back catalogue" – via www.theguardian.com.
  20. Graff, Gary; du Lac, Josh Freedom; McFarlin, Jim, eds. (1998). "Sly & the Family Stone". MusicHound R&B: The Essential Album Guide. Visible Ink Press. ISBN 1578590264.
  21. Lundy, Zeth (1 April 2007). "Sly's the Limit". PopMatters. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  22. "Q review".
  23. Christgau, Robert (3 May 2007). "Extended Family". Rolling Stone (1025/1026). p. 151. Retrieved 16 August 2008.
  24. Stouthall, Nick. "Sly & The Family Stone". Stylus Magazine. Stylus Magazine. Archived from the original on 27 April 2007. Retrieved 16 August 2008.
  25. Hull, Tom (n.d.). "2007 Year End List Mentions: Anthologies/Reissues". tomhull.com. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  26. Shapiro, Peter (March 20, 2007). "Sly And The Family Stone – Reissues". Uncut. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  27. Dubro, Alec (26 July 1969). "Sly & the Family Stone Stand!". Rolling Stone. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. (38): 37. Archived from the original on 2 October 2007. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
  28. Nolan, Joe (25 June 2013). "Perry Farrell's film Gift". Disinformation. Disinformation.com. Retrieved 8 October 2013.
  29. Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (illustrated ed.). St Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. p. 296. ISBN 0-646-11917-6.

Sources
  • Selvin, Joel (1998). For the Record: Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History. New York: Quill Publishing. ISBN 0-380-79377-6.
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