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Sly and the Family Stone on Vinyl: Where to Start and Where to Go Next - GOOD TASTE Records

Sly and the Family Stone on Vinyl: Where to Start and Where to Go Next

Before there was a band, there was Sylvester Stewart: a Bay Area radio DJ at KSOL who put the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on a soul playlist, and a staff producer at Autumn Records cutting sides for the Beau Brummels, Bobby Freeman and Grace Slick's first group, the Great Society. He knew how pop records were built from the inside, and when he assembled a band of his own across 1966 and 1967 he built it to look like nothing else onstage.

Sly and the Family Stone put his brother Freddie on guitar, his sister Rose on keyboards, Larry Graham on bass, Cynthia Robinson on trumpet, Jerry Martini on saxophone and Greg Errico on drums. Black and white, men and women, with the women playing horns and keys rather than standing at a microphone. In 1968 that was close to unheard of, and it gave a song like Everyday People a weight no press release could manufacture. At Woodstock in August 1969 they played in the early hours to a soaked and half asleep field, and the set is still remembered as one of the weekend's best.

Then the mood turned. There's a Riot Goin' On arrived in 1971 murky and exhausted where Stand! had been bright, and the band came apart around it: Errico gone by early 1971, Graham by 1972, the original group dissolved in January 1975. Sly Stone died on June 9, 2025, at 82. GOOD TASTE carries six titles, and their shape is worth knowing before you buy: two studio albums from the peak, and four compilations that cover far more ground between them.

Sly & the Family Stone - Greatest Hits

Sly & the Family Stone - Greatest Hits Vinyl LP

Start here, and not as a compromise. Greatest Hits came out in October 1970 on Epic to fill the long gap between studio albums, and it is one of the few hits packages that functions as a real record. Twelve tracks cover the 1968 to 1970 run, and three had never appeared on an album at all: Hot Fun in the Summertime, Everybody Is a Star and Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). If you only ever own one, this is it.

  • Why it's worth purchasing: the single best entry point to the band, sequenced like an album rather than a list.
  • Why it's worth purchasing: three non-album singles that appear on no studio LP, Thank You among them.
  • Why it's worth purchasing: Dance to the Music, Everyday People, Stand! and I Want to Take You Higher in one place.

Sly & The Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin' On

Sly & The Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin On (Red Color) Vinyl LP

Released November 1, 1971, There's a Riot Goin' On is the turn that the rest of funk spent a decade catching up with. Sly cut most of it alone at his home studio, leaning on a Maestro Rhythm King drum machine in place of a drummer and overdubbing onto the same tape until it wore down, which is where the clouded sound comes from. Billy Preston, Bobby Womack and Ike Turner all pass through. Family Affair and Runnin' Away are the way in. Legacy red pressing.

  • Why it's worth purchasing: the most influential of their albums, and the one that redrew what funk could sound like.
  • Why it's worth purchasing: one of the first prominent drum machine performances on a major soul record.
  • Why it's worth purchasing: a degraded, close-miked sound that rewards a good system and a dark room.

Sly & The Family Stone - Fresh

Sly & The Family Stone - Fresh (50th Anniversary Neon Orange Color) Vinyl LP

Out in June 1973 and cut at the Record Plant in Sausalito, Fresh is Riot with the lights back on. Neither Larry Graham nor Greg Errico is on it: Andy Newmark plays drums, Pat Rizzo joins the horns, and the bass moves between players. Brian Eno has pointed at this record for making the bass drum and the bass the lead instruments. If You Want Me to Stay is the standard, and the crawling cover of Que Sera Sera is the strangest thing here. 50th anniversary neon orange pressing.

  • Why it's worth purchasing: the most playable record of the late period, and the bridge out of Riot.
  • Why it's worth purchasing: If You Want Me to Stay, one of the great bass and vocal performances in funk.
  • Why it's worth purchasing: a rhythm-section approach that producers have been studying ever since.

Sly & the Family Stone - Best Of

Sly & the Family Stone - Best Of (180g Music on Vinyl) Vinyl LP

Where Greatest Hits stops in 1970, Best Of keeps going. Music On Vinyl's double LP runs twenty tracks across 1968 to 1974, so Family Affair and the Riot material sit alongside Dance to the Music, Stand!, Everyday People, Life and Hot Fun in the Summertime. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Take this one if you want the whole arc rather than the 1970 snapshot.

  • Why it's worth purchasing: twenty tracks spanning both the bright years and the dark ones.
  • Why it's worth purchasing: a 180 gram double LP, with room to breathe across four sides.
  • Why it's worth purchasing: the widest single-purchase survey of the band we carry.

Sly & The Family Stone - Who In The Funk Do You Think You Are

Sly & The Family Stone - Who In The Funk Do You Think You Are (Orange Color) (SYEOR 2026) Vinyl LP

The part of the story most collections skip. Who In The Funk Do You Think You Are: The Warner Recordings gathers the two albums Sly made for Warner Bros., Back on the Right Track from 1979 and Ain't But the One Way from 1982, and adds rare demos that had only surfaced on a Rhino Handmade CD. It is on vinyl here for the first time. Rhino orange pressing, SYEOR 2026.

  • Why it's worth purchasing: the Warner years on vinyl for the first time, demos included.
  • Why it's worth purchasing: the late catalog nobody reissues, which makes this the only practical way in.
  • Why it's worth purchasing: a 1979 record that stayed funk while everything around it went disco.

Sly & The Family Stone - Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)

Sly & The Family Stone - Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) (Original Soundtrack) Vinyl LP

The soundtrack to the 2025 documentary Questlove directed and premiered at Sundance, Sly Lives! is a double LP putting the familiar songs next to seven rare and previously unreleased mixes and alternate takes, plus three new edits by Questlove and DJ J. Period. The film gathers Andre 3000, D'Angelo, Chaka Khan, Q-Tip, Nile Rodgers, George Clinton and surviving members of the band.

  • Why it's worth purchasing: seven rare and unreleased mixes you cannot get on the studio albums.
  • Why it's worth purchasing: Questlove's sequencing, which argues for the catalog rather than just collecting it.
  • Why it's worth purchasing: the best current document of why this band still matters to musicians.

If You Like Sly and the Family Stone

  • Funkadelic: George Clinton has been open about how far Sly turned his head, and the two later worked together.
  • James Brown: the other pillar of how funk got built, coming at the same problem from rhythm first.
  • Curtis Mayfield: the same early seventies turn from optimism to unease, told with strings not a drum machine.
  • The Meters: the New Orleans answer, leaner and almost entirely instrumental.
  • Booker T & The MGs: the integrated Stax house band that got there first, and a clear model for the Family Stone.

Where to Go From Here

All six sit in Funk / Soul / Disco, and the studio albums belong to 1970's Vinyl Albums. Our Essential Funk guide puts this catalog in its wider context, and the Funkadelic, James Brown and Curtis Mayfield guides cover the artists standing closest to it. Titles we do not carry, if you are filling gaps elsewhere: the 1967 debut A Whole New Thing, Dance to the Music and Life from 1968, Stand! from 1969, Small Talk from 1974, and Sly Stone's solo High on You from 1975. To browse every Sly and the Family Stone title we carry, visit the Sly and the Family Stone collection.

Coty Smith