Sly Stone - The Seventh Son (1968)

Sylvester Stewart, a.k.a. Sly Stone, was identified as a musical prodigy at an early age, and by the time he was seven he'd already become proficient on the keyboards, with guitar, bass, and drums following by age 11. He was a member of a number of High School bands, concentrating on guitar, and was nicknamed Sly when a classmate misspelled his name 'Slyvester', and it has stuck ever since. With such a musical background it's no surprise that he ended up at Autumn Records as a staff record producer, producing such bands as The Mojo Men and Grace Slick's Great Society, and helping The Beau Brummels hone their sound and enable them to have hits such as 'Laugh, Laugh', and 'Don't Talk To Strangers'. While at Autumn he recorded a couple of singles for them, in 'I Just Learned How To Swim', and 'Buttermilk Parts 1&2', which were released to little fanfare in 1964 and 1965, but the label were impressed enough to consider letting him record an album. It was to be called 'On Stage With Sly', and it would be comprised of Sly's songs recorded with a background of screaming girls, to simulate a live album. Stewart recorded a number of instrumental tracks for it, including 'If You Were Blue', 'Rock Dirge', 'Hi Love', and 'Temptation Walk', which was later released as a single on Autumn, as well as covers of 'Watermelon Man', 'Searchin'', and 'On Broadway'. Around the same time, however, he hooked up with Billy Preston, who was already well on the way to success, and Sly moved into a more creative stage of his career, meaning that the album was put on the back-burner. I've located a number of the songs that Sly recorded for his album, and added in the b-side of a single that he released in 1962 for G&P Records, alongside those two early Autumn discs (with both sides of the 'Buttermilk' single and the two 'Swim' tracks each mixed together), and following his adoption of a new stage name, we have an approximation of what the first Sly Stone album could have sounded like. You can hear the background screams on 'Searchin' and 'Lord, Lord', but luckily the other songs were left as they were recorded, so as the 'On Stage With Sly' title no longer applies I've renamed it after one of the other songs on here. 

Track listing

01 The Seventh Son
02 If You Were Blue
03 I Just Learned How To Swim / Scat Swim
04 Out Of Sight
05 Long Time Alone
06 Hi Love
07 Lord, Lord
08 Buttermilk
09 Searchin'
10 Temptation Walk
11 On Broadway
12 The Jerk
13 Rock Dirge
14 Watermelon Man
15 Underdog