Happy Birthday to Sly Stone – Rock’s First Equal Opportunity Employer

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Most recording artists in the 1960s were singing about lovin' your brothers and sisters regardless of the color of their skin, but few practiced that ethos better than Sly Stone, who assembled the first - and one of the few - interracial, dual-gender rock bands of the era: the iconic Sly and the Family Stone. They perfectly summed up the generation's quest for total acceptance with their number one hit, "Everyday People," a song that produced one of the most popular catchphrases to emerge from rock culture: "different strokes for different folks." When it came to funkadelic rock and soul, Sly did it first and he did it best. Here's a tribute to him on his 72nd birthday.

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Miles Davis and Betty Mabry: One Fine Fusion Led to Another

Read more about the article Miles Davis and Betty Mabry: One Fine Fusion Led to Another

Jazz great Miles Davis experienced mixed reactions toward his role as a major architect of jazz/rock fusion. It was seen by some as a sellout of a master’s medium to a more “base” art form. Nevertheless, this new genre exploded in the mid-seventies, and is now considered essential music. What you may not know is that Davis’s one-time wife – a relatively unheralded singer/songwriter named Betty Mabry – introduced him to the rock/funk scene, and planted the seeds of fusion in his music. By contributor Mike Canton, host of The Soul Show on WYEP fm.

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