*This essay series charts the development of late 20th century sonic migration. With the chief focus on regional musical topography as an analogous window into the fabric of the African American experience.*

This series is about home. The places and the spaces folk both choose and inherit to dwell within. Every part of the country bears a bit of its own historical and cultural imprint, pathways which merge into musical footprints. There is a treasure map which trails through the northern parts of California. Charting a rich musical history of collectives who offered a musical mecca for the masses and an oasis for those from other pockets of the country. The musical topography of 20th century Northern California is heavily steeped in its own brand of fusion. Bay Area music indeed reflects the colors of its diverse demographics, of its neighborhoods and cities. Home to the history of the Black Panthers and their fusion of working class peoples connected and dedicated to community building. The music born from this soil between the early 1960s and late 1980s was no less fertile. A streak of diverse bands, units and musical outfits would uproot from these cities by the sea, offering soul salvation for all those far and near. Perhaps another word that could be used to describe the foundation of their musical contribution to this particular time is: family. A critical element in the assemblage of the area’s legacy.

THE FAMILY STONE

By the age of 9 years old, Sylvester Stewart and his siblings Rose, Loretta and Freddie had formed the Stewart Four: a family gospel group from the super devout, and musically inclined,  Church of God in Christ (COGIC) ministry. Migrants from deep Denton, Texas to the North-Bay township of Vallejo, their music was unmistakably of the southern gospel tradition yet steeped in the pre-pop vocals of the coming decades. The ever ambitious Stewart took off from there and formed The Viscaynes: a shortlived multiracial, co-ed doo-wop group. Stepping into the role of both primary songwriter and producer, Stewart’s talents as a vocal arranger came from his church background certainly, but also from an uncanny ability to synthesize sounds of the zeitgeist into uniquely original and marketable tunes. A couple of substantial record deals and regional hits on the west coast in the early 1960s, like “Yellow Moon'' and its B-Side, “Heavenly Angel'' (1961), proved this to be so.  His ability to make a hit, with an integrated band was so much of a tremendous foreshadowing, that future bandmate and saxophonist Jerry Martini is even credited with playing on these singles.

Around the time he stopped recording with The Viscaynes and producing for Autumn Records’ artists, Stewart took up work as a disc jockey for KSOL, a legendary local radio station. Oakland and San Francisco historically tout a rich musical diversity with dexterity in their breadth of knowledge. This tradition is widely due to DJs like Stewart, who in their day, offered a wide array of musical selections often outside the payola regime that plagued the airwaves at that time. Think about it like this: what we regard or consider the maverick radio personality style with a renegade passion for selection and playlisting, started here and permeated out from these cities. Stewart worked by day as a bonafide rapper-like, DJ-character and a steady session musician by night, often for many of the acts he mashed up on air: The Ronettes, Righteous Brothers, Dionne Warwick, Marvin Gaye and others. This trajectory of teeth cutting with big pop bands while religiously playlisting pop hits, plagued with a mindfulness for pious poetry, synthesized a man who could break boundaries because he stopped seeing them.

By 1966, he and his brother Freddie would fuse bands and create The Family Stone, as we know it: an integrated and non-binary band both in members and in music. Sylvester, now Sly, reunited with Jerry Martini, his siblings, Freddie and Rose, Greg Errico, trumpet player Cynthia Robinson and bassist Larry Graham. Now teamed with Sly’s witty penmanship, social commentary and hip understanding of the complexities of chart-topping music, The Family Stone debuted with a trilogy of 60’s psychedelic-dance albums: starting with A Whole New Thing in 1967. Boasting a raucous outpouring of horn heavy hits, songs like “Underdog” predated up-and-coming bands like Tower of Power. Whereas B-Sides like “Trip To Your Heart” would find a second life decades later in Hip Hop as the main sample for LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out”. If this was the beginning of Sly’s sonic puppeteering, then Dance To The Music (1968) and Life (1968) were his proof of concept.

The base of their preliminary sound was deeply rooted in devotional music. Syncopated praise rhythms from the drummer, free-wielding tambourine parts and 5 or 6 part vocal harmonies all consumed the sound of the Family Stone. No where was this more prevalent than on the chart-topping, formulaic back to back hits “M’Lady” and “Dance To The Music” from the same year. Songs built off of the traditional call and response praise music from the Stewart family church. The roll-call songwriting structure of the recorded performances were akin to a testimonial at the height of service. Each band member received a solo break to express their duty to the groove. From Errico’s quartered note rhythm to Sly’s organ chops, the songs harkened back to Gospel music in more than just its formula. This method of deconstructing lead vocals into equal parts would show up time and time again in the Family Stone’s catalog of that early era. Songs like “Everybody Is A Star”, “I Wanna Take You Higher”, “Sing A Simple Song” and others bore the sectional approach that became a trademark to Sly’s signature sound. So integral to the evolution of modern music it would reappear on Prince’s anthemic “1999”, refashioned into a group confessional style apocalyptic warning.

This is one of many common threads Sly bears in sync with every single geographic pitstop within this series. For Minneapolis, it was Sly’s unique catalog and home recording technique which influenced Prince to use tape decks, bootleg demo cassettes and reclusively self-engineer his own masterpieces. Both bore nearly identical runs of eccentric discographies marked by an ever-evolving introspective songwriting lens focused on love, politics and society, religion and other mercurial topics. Their similarities are even more glaring when dealing with Sly’s later catalog. One of the bigger hits, “Thank You Falletinme Be Mice Elf” was the groundbreaking New Jack Swing era sample behind Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation”, produced by MPLS graduates Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Prince’s bass guitar hero was Larry Graham, the Family Stone star of the aforementioned sample. A fellow self taught musician, singer-songwriter and producer who shared a born again Jehovah’s Witness experience and a penchant for slap bass, Graham, among many things, is also the uncle of Drake.

Sly’s eclectic big band Bay Area sound was the backbone inspiration for all of the early bands from Dayton like The Ohio Players and Junie Morrison. The arrangement and mixing of horns and blaring organs, the textured recordings mixed with pop oriented lyricism on top of gospel influences and jazz choices. These were the missing ingredients in the Ohio river, right outside of James Brown’s reach. Morrison would later marry North Bay Area’s Lynn Mabry; a singer-songwriter turned background singer extraordinaire for the likes of Parliament-Funkadelic and George Michael. Mabry and Morrison toured together for a 4 year stretch, resurrecting Funkadelic in the studio and on the stage. Mabry’s most famously featured in Jonathan Demme’s 1985 Talking Heads concert film, Stop Making Sense, where she shared the stage with fellow P-Funk alumnus, (the late) Bernie Worrell. Among all the many amazing things Mabry is, she is also the cousin of Sly Stone.

A diverse discography that shifted over three decades provided an indelible mark on music. A perfect symbol for this series: a southern expatriate, Bay Area transplant turned megastar who became the model of the burgeoning black experience. Perhaps his greatest contribution is indeed that ability to fuse and represent so many facets of fashionable music: from big band soul to intimate portrayals of psychedelic psychology. Most importantly, Sly Stone remains a homebase for so many artists who have followed after him, touching every corner of the country and its respective exports.

THE TOWER

Across town, another multi-racial soul group was following a similar trajectory of coupling heavy studio session work and solo material releases. Primarily a horn section (featuring the singer Lenny Wiilliams), the Oakland based Tower of Power toted a total of 11+ members at any time. Recording together through fluctuating turnover rates since 1968 for bigger Bay Area acts like Carlos Santana and Family Stone off-shoot Graham Central Station. As a horn based band, they managed to capitalize on the concentration on instrumental music coming out of the area. Their retention of masterful musicians not only allowed the group to create heavily syncopated arrangements but also maintain a grasp over the landscape of contemporary music.

Similar to Sly Stone, this group had members who also deeply affected the conception of modern musicianship. For instance, as Stone shifted the paradigm of drum playing and programming, so did Tower of Power’s drummer, David Garibaldi. Known for his elaborate and unorthodox drum kit setups, sometimes featuring 5-6 toms of various sizes, multiple hi-hats on either side of the kit and more cymbals than most. A prolific arranger and songwriter for the band, songs like “What Is Hip” became contemporary cutting blocks for drummers in wait. Across the country, young Minnesotans Morris Day and Prince would practice “Soul Vaccinations” another Garibaldi, Tower of Power production of drum mastery. Their collective, self imposed deference to Garibaldi would follow the two into one of their biggest joint classics, “777-9311”. The song is built on two main ingredients: Prince’s impressionistic Larry Graham style bass playing and a tightly wound drum groove. The latter has always been the subject of much debate as to whether it is being played or programmed. As divulged by Day himself, the drum groove on the hit song was a stock sequence from the Linn Drum Machine. The original drum machine included a plethora of programmed tracks, one of which was created by Garibaldi. Their mutual fascination with the Bay Area drummer gave birth to one of the quintessential anthems of their Minneapolis sound.

THE FAMILY E

Similar to Stone, Santana was also a Bay Area transplant but by way of Mexico. During his time in San Francisco, he too created a multiracial band which fused rock & roll with the traditional music of his home base of Tijuana. He ended up working extensively with renowned musicians, Coke and Pete Escovedo at the top of the 70’s; two brothers who bore a similar background as Bay Area Mexican American immigrants. The Escovedos stood as a strong family unit of master musicians who helped ingratiate the Bay Area output with a unique percussive signature sound. Having previously debuted as the Escovedo Bros. Jazz Sextet with their third brother, Phil, the family at large belonged to a prodigious web of East Bay Latin Afro-Cuban Jazz players.

The family worked extensively with Tito Puente and Cal Tjader for many decades and created a strong network of percussionists for both live and in-studio sessions. Their omnipresence in both the Santa-fusion world of rock and R&B, Jazz and Adult Contemporary radio created a reputation reaching far and wide. This mythos of a drummers-mecca attracted a young, Steve Arrington, from Dayton, Ohio. It would be in Oakland under the mentorship of The Esovedos where Arrington crafted his ability as a drummer. Rehearsing and performing with the bands and its many offshoots, he stepped into the school of salsa. For Arrington, it was a total recall of polyrhythmic information which no doubt altered his groove theory dramatically. All of this occurred before his prodigal return to Ohio as the primary percussionist and penman for the bubbling band, Slave. While still under the wing of the seasoned percussionists, Arrington began to rub shoulders with Pete’s daughter, drummer and songwriter, Sheila.

Sheila had started regular session work with Marvin Gaye, Lionel Richie and San-Fran acts like George Duke. A budding musician and artist, Sheila rolled through the 1980s sharing a decade-long partnership with Prince, performing both live as a drummer/music director and in studio as a Paisley Park protege. Bridging yet another gap from this area to Minneapolis, she added a palpable percussive texture to Prince’s sound. With the rare addition of a fellow drummer, her presence peaked the sonic height of Prince’s entire operation.   It was the simple things like: adding a second kick drum to the tour kit setup, for instance, that shifted their depth of sound. Also it was her more particular additions, like the timbales and congas from her front of stage setup, which helped Prince step into his newfangled fascination with Go-Go rhythms. She brought in exotic Brazilian instruments like the Cuica from playing Samba in decades past. Coming from the same cloth as Carlos Santana (Prince’s main guitar idol), she emancipated him from the purgatory of Jimi Hendrix prepackaging; a consequence of his token black pop-guitar posturing. Her ability to infuse her own musical tapestry onto his otherwise traditional funk leanings affected the trajectory of his output as a whole. All of these subtle propositions brought out the best in Prince and changed the Minneapolis sound in an instant, and her presence would continue to do so. In 1986, when Sheila would open for Prince’s Hit N Run Tour, she enlisted newly discovered prodigy Ray “Raphael” Wiggins to play in their collective bands on bass and guitar. That stint lasted about a year and some change before Prince’s lineup changed, where most everyone excluding Sheila was shaken off the roster. Wiggins left the Escovedo camp, joined back up with his brothers, changed his name to Saadiq and kicked off the career of Tony! Toni! Toné!: a chart topping, New Jack Swing era soul group. From there, Saadiq would continue to do much of what Prince has done: carry the torch of soul fusion, cultivate various projects of critical acclaim and help foster a baton to D’Angelo in the very near future.

THE DOCK OF THE BAY

There is no one typical sound of this place. Perhaps it can not be heard but felt. A transcontinental glow radiating to every nook and nestle that cares to bear an even sweeter sound. There is no binding element quite like the richness that bleeds from the Bay Area. Each sterling example of this tribe of interconnected vessels helps to bridge and connect nearly every single community outside its border. Minneapolis, Ohio, DC, VA, NY (to name a few) have all been stops on the map of this journey. The amorphous nature of its cast of characters: Sly Stone, The Escovedos, Tower of Power helped so many others define themselves. It is an unquantifiable contribution to the identity of these places and these spaces. Our homes by any other name.