Sly's Stony Name and Brian Wilson's "Good Vibrations"

It's a sad week when we lose two musical luminaries: Sly Stone and Brian Wilson. 

Sly & the Family Stone's Greatest Hits was one of the first albums I selected from the Columbia Record Club my family belonged to just after my 13th birthday. It opened with, "I Want to Take You Higher" and was full of positive, uplifting messages like, "You Can Make It If You Try" and "Everybody Is a Star." 

"Everyday People," the band's first #1 hit, was a perfect transition for me from nursery rhymes to rock and roll,  in the rhythm of a jump-rope rhyme with a funky twist: 

There is a blue one 

who can't accept the green one 

For living with a fat one, 

trying to be a skinny one 

Different strokes for different folks 

And so on and so on and scooby-dooby-dooby 

Ooh, sha-sha 

We got to live together 

 

The man who became known as Sly Stone was born as Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, and raised in the Bay Area city of Vallejo in Northern California, where he performed gospel music starting at the age of 4 or 5 with his siblings (and future bandmates) Freddie and Rose. Already a successful songwriter and music producer by the age of 19, he produced Grace Slick's song "Somebody to Love" for her original band The Great Society. He soon became a popular D.J. at the San Francisco radio station KSOL.

In his memoir "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," he writes of that time:

That was when I completed my name. Back then, when they added a new on-air voice, they usually made up a DJ name. I was already using the Sly from the blackboard, but I didn't know the rest yet. "Sly Stewart" didn't sound quite right. Someone at the station, maybe Tom Johnson, tried to pin "Sly Sloan" on me. That didn't work at all-you couldn't even get it out of your mouth right. "Give me a few days to think of something better," I said. It didn't take that long. 

I went on the air and introduced myself as Sly Stone. I was cooking with a bunch of ingredients. It sounded right. I was already smoking marijuana. And there was a tension in the name. Sly was strategic, slick. Stone was solid. (Ray Charles would even have a song called "Let's Go Get Stoned," too, but that wouldn't come out for a few years yet.) Once I had my name, I started making up little rhymes around it and putting them on-air. I'm Sly Stone of KSOL, goodness for your mind, body, and your soul.