Sly & the Family Stone – Mother Beautiful
Sly & the Family Stone – Can’t Strain My Brain
Sly & the Family Stone – Time For Livin’
This record from Sly & the Family Stone isn’t a particularly rare record in general, but this particular copy is somewhat rare (more on that below). By this time, Larry Graham had split as had Greg Errico, replaced by Rusty Allen & Bill Lordan, respectively. My original reason for buying this record from Wax’n’Facts in Atlanta in the mid 1990s was “Loose Booty” which was sampled nicely by the Beastie Boys on Paul’s Boutique for their song “Shadrach.” I’m not sure when Small Talk stopped just being the record with the Beastie Boys sample on it, but at some point years later I finally took a full listen to this album and that’s when I started to appreciate it and these days, though objectively there are probably better overall records from Sly & the Family Stone, this one remains my favorite.
I think the quality that makes it stand out is how loose everything seems, most of the grooves here are mid-tempo and don’t sound planned out at all. There’s a fair amount of studio chatter on multiple tracks, perhaps connected to the theme of “Small Talk,” perhaps by conscious design to give the impression of the ease with which Sly & company can lay down the funky.
The moment that I realized that this was actually a pretty rare record was during a fundraiser radio show at KALX that I was doing with Matthew Africa. We were chatting about our mutual adoration for “Can’t Strain My Brain” (my single favorite track from Sly and for Matthew, at least at the time, the horn sections in this song were his favorite of all time), when I was telling him how much I also dug the break at the beginning of “Time For Livin’” and began to play it in the cue monitor. What I learned immediately from Matthew’s reaction was that the break we were listening to wasn’t on the domestic version of this release…it was on this record because it was a Canadian press.
Sly was often known to tinker with his songs in the studio (another rare example of this is the “outlaw” version of Fresh that was released on CD in the early 1990s and then immediately pulled by Epic because virtually every song had a radically different arrangement than the US release from 1973), but I’d never heard of completely different versions of his songs actually ending up on releases until I discovered that they were on this record (this version of “Can’t Strain My Brain” is also subtly different, neither version to my knowledge has been issued in this form, other than this record).
I’d originally posted this on my mother’s birthday (Bobbie Jean Tyson Barnes 1948-1995) since it made good sense as a tribute to her and its a record I’m sure she would have loved. Probably more than any one else, my mother had the most influence over the two major parts of my life, music and education. She gave me a perfect model as a teacher and her broad tastes created the environment necessary for me to gain the love of so many varieties of music that I have now. I can’t think of a more fitting tribute than the song “Mother Beautiful” contained on this record. Though it’s very short at 1:54, the sentiment in the lyrics could have been written for my mother (and it’s something I’ll be singing to my future children about their momma).
Sly Stone – Mother Beautiful
Who’s the one who finally takes the pain
With you, with you
Suffers even when it’s you to blame
With you, with you
Mother Beautiful in my thought
Mother Beautiful could never be bought
Who’s the reason for my daddy’s grin
It’s true, it’s true
Any season and she’s my best friend
It’s true, it’s true
Mother Beautiful could just be a thought
Mother Beautiful could never be bought
Sometimes I say mama (Mother Beautiful 2x)
I say mother dear (Mother Beautiful 2x)
Sometimes I call you mother (Mother Beautiful 2x)
She’s here
So the lesson of this whole story is that sometimes it pays to buy non-US versions of a record, even one you may think isn’t that special to begin with, cause sometimes you end up with a truly rare gem and when you dig deep you discover songs you couldn’t dream of living without.
Cheers,
Michael