Sly and the Family Stone Archives

Five Good Covers: “St. James Infirmary” (Louis Armstrong)

Posted by Jordan Becker at 12:00 pm 1 Response »

Jul 112025

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

Many folk and blues songs derive from other songs, since so often they were originally transmitted by oral tradition and not sheet music or recordings. Performers would hear a song, and change it for artistic purposes, or because they misremembered what they heard, creating a big version of the game “Telephone.” So, when a song’s origins are unclear, how do you determine what is the “original” version, and what are “covers?” That’s the issue that we get when discussing “St. James Infirmary,” a song whose origin is shrouded in mystery. There’s even a book about its roots, a blog, and a number of essays, but there doesn’t appear to be any universally accepted conclusion.

Some believe that the song derives from a tune called “The Unfortunate Lad” or “The Unfortunate Rake,” about a man dying of a venereal disease. Although that theory appears to be losing favor, and that song may actually be more closely related to “Streets of Laredo,” a cowboy song. Another song, “Those Gambler’s Blues,” (or just “Gambler’s Blues”), may be the source material, because, like the more modern versions of “St. James Infirmary,” it initially focuses not on the narrator, but on his sweetheart, who is dead in the hospital. (And some posit other source material.) The first sheet music for “Gambler’s Blues” was published in 1925 by Carl Moore and Phil Baxter, and the poet Carl Sandburg published a book, The American Songbag, in 1927 with two different versions of “Gambler’s Blues.” The same year, Fess Williams and his Royal Flush Orchestra released the first recording of the song. Continue reading »

The 30 Best Sly & The Family Stone Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 9:00 am No Responses »

Jun 272025

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

Sly Stone died on June 9 at the age of 82. Two days later, Brian Wilson died, also 82. It was a rough week for eccentric musical geniuses years ahead of their time. We paid tribute to Wilson here, and a couple years ago did a full Best Beach Boys Covers Ever list that now serves as a de facto tribute too. After all, he wrote just about all of those songs.)

So today, the great Sly Stone gets the same treatment. Thirty covers of all the hits, and a few deeper cuts too. Hot fun begins on the next page. (And once you’re done with this, check out our new Five Good Covers piece on “Family Affair.”)

Five Good Covers: “Family Affair” (Sly and the Family Stone)

Posted by Tom McDonald at 10:00 am 3 Responses »

Jun 132025

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

This week brings the news that Sly Stone has passed away, leaving many anthems and antics to remember him by. His passing comes at a time when Sly is fresh in mind, though several decades past his productive years. That’s due in part to the release, just a few months ago, of Sly Lives!, Questlove’s documentary about the artist, and his earlier doc Summer of Soul, featuring Sly and the Family Stone at the Harlem Cultural Festival. In part it’s thanks to Sly himself, since his own long-awaited memoir came out in 2023 and is still being processed. And in part he’s fresh in mind because Sly’s music was just so timeless, his performances so indelible.

Even if you can’t name more than one or two of Sly Stone’s hits, his influence is inescapable. When you dance to the music–any music, particularly dance music of the last 30 years–it’s likely he’s in that music’s DNA. Sly directly shaped the sound and sensibility of performers like Michael Jackson and Prince who went on to eclipse Sly himself in popularity. (Prince acknowledged the debt in his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction speech.) It’s largely through Prince’s influence that the Sly vibe pulses through the music of today’s strongest performers. Sly’s mark wasn’t only on the dance-floor, either: he was also a huge influence on Miles Davis, and without Sly’s template there’d be no Bitches Brew, or jazz fusion as we know it.

The most enduring of Sly Stone’s hits for me is “Family Affair” from There’s a Riot Goin’ On (1971). “Family Affair” is the most successful of all Sly’s singles, and yet artists haven’t covered it to death. In fact, it’s a little surprising that artists have covered it at all, because it’s that unique. One of the most genre-defying songs of its era, it’s at once a deeply personal snapshot–recorded as the Family Stone ensemble was unraveling–and a comment on societal decay, the generational and racial divides roiling the country as ’60s optimism gave way to despair. “Family Affair” signaled a new dark direction for Stone, with its stark sonic palette stripped of the exuberance and lush orchestration that defined his earlier recordings.

The song features the groundbreaking use of a drum machine. It highlights keyboard work by Sly’s good friend Billy Preston (who had a knack for stepping in when great bands were falling apart). There’s a vocal marked by a remarkably grainy texture and a confessional tone. (It ultimately admits to nothing, and Sly’s voice despite its intimacy has a cold and distant feel.) The refrain by Sly’s sister Rose is almost airy and light in comparison, as if the vocal styles reflect the two different children Sly sings about in the first verse (“One child grows up to be somebody who just loves to learn…”).

Subsequent verses describe emotional traps within and without the family:

You can’t leave, ’cause your heart is there
And you, you can’t stay, ’cause you been somewhere else

Sly’s words circle back on themselves and cancel out:

You can’t cry, ’cause you’ll look broke down
But you’re cryin’ anyway ’cause you’re all broke down

He’s caught up in contradictory desires; he could see the downfall coming, perhaps. These lines were weighty the day the record came out, and they only get heavier the more you know about the way Sly’s entrapment in addiction destroyed his circle, his family, and his career.

After this song, sadly, the story for Sly was mostly a story of chaos and breakdown. He made recoveries, yes, but never made a comeback. The irony is that he outlived so many of the artists who followed his model–Gil Scott-Heron, Michael Jackson, Prince–and still never found that second wind. But Questlove said it in his documentary, and the words stand true even with this week’s sad news: “Sly Lives.”
Continue reading »

In the Spotlight: Peter Frampton

Posted by Seuras Og at 10:00 am 1 Response »

Oct 172024

In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!

Peter Frampton has been everyone and everywhere at once, with that bloody thing in his mouth. He’s also been anonymous and relatively unknown. Neither pendulum peak has stopped this Brit having a career that’s lasted 50 years and counting. Me, I would say a (belated) induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a spotlight well worth acknowledging, in anyone’s book and by anyone’s reckoning. So, let’s have a look at that career.
Continue reading »

In the Spotlight: Kool & the Gang

Posted by Curtis Zimmermann at 12:00 pm No Responses »

Oct 142024

In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!

On their 1985 hit “King of Rock,” the future Reverend Run declared: “As one def rapper, I know I can hang/I’m Run from Run-DMC, like Kool from Kool & the Gang.” In retrospect, it seems only fitting that the group that helped bring rap to the mainstream would namecheck Kool & the Gang on one of their biggest hits. Kool & the Gang’s multi-instrumental fusion of rock, pop, R&B, funk and disco, provided the backbone for modern rap. As of this writing, the website WhoSampled.com lists 2053 known samples of their music, and the number will only keep growing.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. If you went to a party, dance or club in the ‘70s and ‘80s, odds are that Kool & the Gang was booming through the speakers. Whether you were from New York or Hollywood and wanted to “Celebrate and have a good time,” “Get down on it,” “Get up with the get down,” “Go dancin’,” or perhaps “Reggae dancin’,” they had a song for seemingly every type of occasion. Even today, it’s rare to attend any life milestone event (wedding, bar mitzvah, etc.) and not hear their good-time anthem “Celebration.”

Though the group has not recorded many covers throughout their long career, cover songs were an important part of the band’s origin story. The band was founded in the mid-‘60s in Jersey City, New Jersey by a group of child jazz prodigies that included brothers Ronald and Robert “Kool” Bell. Performing under various names, they got their start playing bars, clubs and events throughout New Jersey in the ‘60s as teenagers. In a 2023 interview with Questlove, drummer George Brown said that would often perform the hits of the day to win over the crowd. It’s a not-uncommon story for many of the world’s greatest rockers.

One can hear elements of these origins on their early albums. Singing with Dee-Lite Records in 1969, the band included a handful of covers on their first few releases. Listening to these songs now, on the eve of the band’s long-overdue induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, provides a fascinating glimpse into their virtuosity as musicians. One can hear elements of just about every style of popular music from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. It’s easy to imagine them as members of the house bands at Motown or Muscle Shoals.

In their early years, the band were masters at emulating other people’s music, even if they had not quite found the sound that would make them superstars. Listen to their past, and you’ll hear why their future was indeed a “celebration to last throughout the years.”

Author’s Note: The group would later release a Christmas album in 2013 that contained several covers, but we’ll save that for another time and instead focus solely on the early years.

The 50 Best Kinks Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 10:35 am 1 Response »

Jun 212024

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

If The Kinks had stopped after their first year, they’d still be legends. “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night,” two of the all-time-great sixties rock singles, were both released in 1964. That’s more classics in one year than most bands have in decades (and their year gets even better if you slide in January 1965’s “Tired of Waiting for You,” recorded before “All Day Etc”).

But if The Kinks had stopped after their first year, this list certainly wouldn’t run 50 covers deep. Because, of course, they didn’t stop. They kept releasing hits, including Top 10s in both the ’70s (“Lola,” “Apeman”) and ’80s (“Come Dancing”). Maybe even more importantly, they kept creating, kept innovating, kept pushing forward, not settling into retreading their early garage-rock sound. That wide breadth gets reflected in the Kinks songs that artists covered. The big hits, of course, are well represented. But so are plenty of album cuts and singles that “flopped” at the time but were rediscovered years later.

Ray Davies turns 80 today. So today, we celebrate his birthday—and his ability to withstand decades of interviews about whether he and brother Dave will ever reunite—with our countdown of the 50 Best Kinks Covers Ever.