Sly & the Family Stone were an important and influential American rock band from San Francisco, California. Active from 1967 until 1975, the band was pivotal in the development of soul, funk and psychedelia. Headed by singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist Sly Stone, and containing a number of his family members and friends, the band was the first major American rock band to have a multicultural lineup, giving African-Americans, Caucasians, males, and females all roles in the band's instrumentation.
Brothers Sly Stone and singer/ guitarist Freddie Stone had combined their bands (Sly & the Stoners and Freddie & the Stone Souls) in 1967, joining the two of them, trumpetist Cynthia Robinson, and drummer Gregg Errico. Saxophonist Jerry Martini and bassist Larry Graham completed the original lineup; within a year, Sly and Freddie's sister, singer/ keyboardist Rose Stone, joined as well. This collective recorded five Top 10 hits and four groundbreaking albums, which were a major influence on the sound of American pop music in general and soul, R&B, funk, and later hip hop music in particular. In the preface of his book on the band, For the Record: Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History, Joel Selvin sums up the importance of Sly & the Family Stone's influences on African-American music by stating that "there are two types of black music: black music before Sly Stone, and black music after Sly Stone" .
