Greatest Hits (Sly and the Family Stone album)

Greatest Hits is a greatest hits album by soul/funk band Sly & the Family Stone, released November 21, 1970 on Epic Records. It includes all of the singles from the albums Dance to the Music (1968), Life (1968), and Stand! (1969), and all of their charting b-sides. The album also includes one non-charting album track, "You Can Make It If You Try" from Stand!, and three non-album singles from 1969: "Hot Fun in the Summertime", "Everybody Is a Star", and "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)". Music journalist Robert Christgau has called Greatest Hits "among the greatest rock and roll LPs of all time."^[1] In 2003, the album was ranked number 60 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

History

Released in the midst of an eighteen-month stretch from late 1969 to late 1971, during which Sly & the Family Stone released no new material, Greatest Hits was designed by Epic Records to appease consumer demand and keep the band's name and music in the public's eye. Greatest Hits peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200, and was the band's most successful album sales-wise.

The songs from this album were remixed into Quadraphonic format in 1970 - Once as a test mix, and then again for proper release. Both the Test mixes and released mixes contain different running times and alternate or missing vocals/instrumentation to the original versions. Sly Stone and his engineers never got around to making standard stereo mixes of the three non-album singles. Epic had to resort to taking the mono versions and making simulated stereo versions by electronically rechannelling the mono mixes' frequencies. For years, the Quadraphonic LP of this album was the only way to find stereo mixes of "Hot Fun in the Summertime", "Everybody is a Star" and "Thank You". True stereo mixes of these three songs were finally done when the Sly & the Family Stone catalog was digitally remastered in the 1990s. The album was properly reissued by Epic/Legacy in 2007.

The surround sound information on the QUAD LP can be extracted by today's audio-video receivers using the DOLBY PRO LOGIC setting.

Track listing

All songs written by Sylvester Stewart, and produced and arranged by Sly Stone for Stone Flower Productions. Superscripts denote original album sources, referenced below.

Side 1

1. "I Want to Take You Higher" – 5:22 ^c
2. "Everybody is a Star" – 3:00
3. "Stand!" – 3:08 ^c
4. "Life" – 2:58 ^b
5. "Fun" – 2:20 ^b
6. "You Can Make It If You Try" – 3:39 ^c

Side 2

1. "Dance To The Music" – 2:58 ^a
2. "Everyday People" – 2:20 ^c
3. "Hot Fun in the Summertime" – 2:37
4. "M'Lady" – 2:44 ^b
5. "Sing a Simple Song" – 3:55 ^c
6. "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" – 4:47

Notes

Album sources

• ^a from Dance to the Music (1968)
• ^b from Life (1968)
• ^c from Stand! (1969)
• "Everybody is a Star", "Hot Fun in the Summertime" and "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" are all new to album.
• Tracks 1-6 make up Side One on the vinyl release, tracks 7-12 make up Side Two.

Personnel

• Sly Stone: vocals, organ, guitar, piano, harmonica, and more
• Freddie Stone: vocals, guitar
• Larry Graham: vocals, bass guitar
• Rose Stone: vocals, piano, keyboards
• Cynthia Robinson: trumpet, vocal ad-libs
• Jerry Martini: saxophone
• Greg Errico: drums
• Little Sister (Vet Stone, Mary McCreary, Elva Mouton): background vocals

Chart history

See also

• List of number-one R&B albums of 1970 (U.S.)

References