I thought of diversity, equity and inclusion when I heard about the death of Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone fame. Sly died on June 9. Sly’s whole persona stood in opposition to the crusade against DEI.

I liked what Questlove wrote about Sly: “He had a way of talking, moving from playful to earnest at will. He had a look, belts, and hats and jewelry. Everybody was a star, as he said (and sang) but he was a special case, cooler than everything around him by a factor of infinity.”

Sly was the vision of radical inclusion. He was about getting everyone up and dancing. He left no one behind. Sly opposed racism of all varieties. His singing “I Want To Take You Higher” at Woodstock was pure joy and unifying to all who experienced it.

Coming out of an American history of deep segregation, Sly pioneered having a mixed-sex, multi-racial band. Shocking as it is to acknowledge because it didn’t happen until the late 1960’s, Sly’s band was the first big-name American rock band that was integrated both racially and sexually.

You cannot appreciate Sly’s radical quality unless you situate it in the late 1950’s - early 1960’s environment. To say America wasn’t integrated doesn’t convey lived reality. Black and white people lived in different universes that were separate and unequal. Donny Hathaway singing The Ghetto comes to mind.

Opponents of DEI forget that segregation utterly defined America only a short time ago. As a society we have never honestly faced this history. There has never been any Truth and Reconciliation commission here. Sly didn’t accept that status quo and in his own way, he lived opposition.

Of 1960’s counterculture heroes, I think Sly is most under-rated. Maybe a definitive statement of the 1960’s peace-and-love world view was his song “Everyday People.” It is stunning how one song can say so much and do it so beautifully. The lyrics are simple and memorable:

“There is a blue one who can’t accept the green one

For living with the Black one trying to be a skinny one

Different strokes for different folks.”

It is a lead up to the killer lines:

“We’ve got to live together!

I am no better, and neither are you

We are the same whatever we do…”

There is no better statement of egalitarianism. That callout, “I am everyday people,” was like the hippie national anthem. Other Sly songs are equally memorable. “Stand” was a great song about fighting injustice:

“Stand for the things you know are right

It’s the truth that the truth makes them so uptight.”

I always loved “Dance To The Music.” No song could get people up and dancing faster. Later on, there is the melancholic “Family Affair.” Sly was not a shallow pop star. He knew sadness and almost self-destruction.

For Sly fans, I wanted to recommend his autobiography, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), co-written with Ben Greenman in 2023. There was much I didn’t know about Sly’s life. His voice comes through strongly in the book.

Sly grew up in a religious Pentecostal family that loved music. The family sang together. Sly was a musical prodigy and multi-instrumentalist. He played keyboards, guitar, bass, harmonica and drums. As a child he sang with his siblings in a gospel group. At age 11, he was performing six or seven times a week at church functions.

Before he became famous, he worked as a disc jockey at San Francisco’s soul station, KSOL. He had eclectic tastes and he played Dylan, Ray Charles, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Aretha and the Staple Singers. He also went on to work as a record producer in the Bay Area and he knew the whole music scene and produced, among others, Grace Slick. Whether it was as a DJ or a musician, there was an open-minded spirit of inclusion in his work.

He mixed funk, soul, gospel and rock. Musical historian Rickey Vincent described Sly’s band as “too hot and too Black to be rock, too positive to be blues and too wild to be soul”.

Sly’s autobiography shows the out-of-control craziness of his lifestyle when he was living the largest. Super-stardom was an impossible burden. The pressures to keep producing at the level he was were too much. The disintegration of the band and Sly’s chronic drug use turned him into a recluse. He isolated, and he had a tremendous problem breaking from his drug habits.

In evaluating Sly and his musical legacy, I think the great moments are what we should focus on. Everyone has contradictions and peaks and valleys in their life. Given how hard he lived, it is amazing that Sly lived until 82. He watched Janis and Jimi go down early and I am sure he knew it could have been him.

In his song ”Everybody is a star,” Sly wrote:

“Everybody is a star

I can feel it when you shine on me

I love you for who you are

Not the one you feel you need to be…”

That is the authentic Sly Stone.

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot.