It’s not a plea, it’s an ultimatum.Ĭharles Stepney was a fabulously cantankerous genius. From Mayfield, of all people, it sounded like a taste of the end of the world. Opening with an ominous endorsement of the Book of Revelation, it explodes, with a terrifyingly out-of-character scream, into a panicky tour of America in 1970. “Sisters! Niggers! Whiteys! Jews! Crackers!” – they’re all going to their doom together. On Mayfield’s debut solo single after leaving the Impressions, the voice of People Get Ready and We’re a Winner presented a grimly apocalyptic twist on racial unity.

Psychedelic soul gave politically active songwriters a sound that was as fierce and heavy as their message, so what a shock it must have been to hear soul music’s mild-mannered optimist snap like this. 4 Curtis Mayfield – (Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Going to Go To hear how far they could go when they weren’t worrying about hit singles, try the Undisputed Truth’s mind-expanding version of Ball of Confusion. Whitfield and Strong continued to amaze for the next few years. Caught between God and the devil, escape and despair, it’s an uplifting song about a dire situation. If someone had a good idea, it went in, and Cloud Nine was the first fruit of this approach. To that end, he scooped up fresh talent like local guitarist Dennis Coffey, who introduced him to the wah-wah pedal, and arranged songs on the fly in the studio. Despite showing little interest in politics and initially dismissing Sly & the Family Stone as “a passing fancy”, Whitfield realised Motown was ripe for change and he could be at the centre of it if he combined protest with psychedelia. Motown’s psychedelic experiment began with the bizarre Tardis-like intro to the Supremes' hit Reflections, but it took Norman Whitfield and his songwriting partner Barrett Strong to really seize the zeitgeist by the throat in 1968. Everyone involved seems to be having the most fun on Earth. In light of Sly’s later descent into himself, the sense of warmth and community - the way each member (“Lazy Larry” on fuzzbox bass, “Ready Freddie” on snaking guitar) gets a turn in the spotlight - is strangely poignant. It takes old-fashioned dance-craze R&B and James Brown showmanship through the looking glass via a disorientating array of studio trickery. The 12-minute centrepiece of their 1967 album Dance to the Music isn’t the best advertisement for Sly’s songwriting but it showcases the band at their most expansive and uninhibited, tightly drilled yet anarchic in spirit, seemingly trying to explore every idea at once while keeping you dancing. Sly’s multiracial line-up of men and women was the 60s dream made flesh. 2 Sly & the Family Stone – Dance to the Medleyīefore the psychic meltdown of There’s a Riot Goin’ On, Sly & the Family Stone were the most wildly utopian band of their era and one of the most influential.

Best last soul funk 1970s