Rant #2,516: Hot Fun In the Summertime

Or is it “Hot Fun In the Autumn Time?”
 
I really don’t know right now, but all I can say is that right now, at least for me, it’s time again for Sly and the Family Stone.
 
It all started a few weeks ago.
 
I was listening to Sirius satellite radio’s 1960s music channel—Channel 6, naturally—while driving in my car, and “Hot Fun In the Summertime” came on the radio.
 
Not that this was a new revelation, of course. The song has been coming on the radio of Top 40, FM and satellite radio stations for the past 50 years or so, a staple of whatever type of radio you are listening to.
 
But when it came on this time, it sounded almost different.
 
Maybe it was a different mix, maybe it just sounded better on satellite radio, maybe I was just ready to hear the song at that every moment in time to soothe my senses.
 
But whatever the case, this song came on the radi0, and I remember thinking to myself as I was driving that this song sounded just so good, so perfect on the radio.
 
And, in fact, from the first time I heard it more than 50 years ago—probably on WABC-AM, the nation’s top Top 40 station at the time, the station that you could hear all over the country on certain nights—I just loved the song, and it defined what summer was all about to me, certainly being a city kid back when the song was new.
 
Sly and the Family Stone had burst onto the scene in 1968 or so, a mixed race band that took rock, pop, rhythm and blues, soul and a few other musical genres and mixed all of them into a new stew, which later morphed into what we now call funk.
 
But back when they came on the scene, their music, their look, and their vibe was just so different than what we were used to seeing, but it was all honed out west in San Francisco, where Sylvester Stewart—Sly Stone—had become one of the most prestigious musical entities in the burgeoning rock scene out there, a black man producing rock acts like the Beau Brummels while also honing his craft as a songwriter and overall musical entity with numerous other projects that didn’t initially bare much fruit.
 
But somehow, with the San Francisco rock scene becoming more prevalent, his stature was also rising, and when he formed the Family Stone with several musical relatives and friends, he hit pay dirt, but it wasn’t immediate.
 
There had been interracial acts prior to Sly and the Family Stone—the American Breed comes to mind, but there were others too—but this band was different.
 
There sound, even early on, could not be defined, but Epic Records knew it had something special with the band. While its first album, the suitably titled “A Whole New Thing,” didn’t do much business, the next album set the world on fire due to the title track, and from there, there was no looking back for the band.
 
“Dance to the Music”—both the single and the album—rocked all formats, and became top sellers for the band, the template that they needed for their success during the next five or sis years.
 
The song mixed every possible pop musical genre at the time, coming out with a song that even if you didn’t dance, you had to at least tap your toes to.
 
This was not Motown, this was not rock, this was not pop … it was a mix of everything and anything, virtually like taking the musical kitchen sink and throwing all the dishes together into one heaping pike.
 

It set the tone for the band, which had also gone from conventional outfits to stuff this side of the 5th Dimension, both figuratively and literally, so not only was their music a tonic for the ears, the band was a tonic for your eyes.
 
Over the next few years, they had hit record after hit record—“I Want To Take You Higher,” “Everybody Is a Star,” “Family Affair,” “Life,” “Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin,” and their albums were also selling in the millions with each release.
 
They triumphantly played Woodstock, and for a few years, they were perhaps the top American musical act on the charts.
 
Sure, it all unraveled after a while, a mix of too much pomp, too many drugs, a lack of continued creativity, and through the behavior of the band’s leader, Sly Stone.
 
But within that five or six year period of success came “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” a paean of that time of year, a song that hit with me and millions of others as THE song of the summer in the late 1960s.
 
It just came at the right time, and every time I head it, it brings me to a different time in my life, a time when I was still a kid, soon to be a teenager in a few months after it came out in the summer of 1969, and I just took to it hook, line a sinker.
 
I just love the song, and I have often thought why I liked it so much. Was it the song, or was it the connection that my neighborhood had to Sly Stone.
 
This is getting off the topic a bit, but I grew up, as I have told you many times, in a somewhat magical place called Rochdale Village, a 20-building cooperative development that was situated smack dab in the middle of one of the oldest black neighborhoods in the country, Jamaica, Queens.
 
Being that myself and others were white kids growing up in such a development, we saw and heard things that we would have never experienced if we had grown up in a segregated environment, and that also included music, where we were exposed to everything playing around us.
 
By 1969, Soy Stone was a huge celebrity, and his girlfriend at the time—whose name I cannot remember for the life of me—lived in Rochdale Village, as did the girlfriend of another huge star at the time, basketball’s Walt Frazier.
 
Now I cannot remember which one it was, but somehow, word got out that one of them were going to pick up their girlfriend one early afternoon right in the development.
 
Each one drove a Rolls Royce at the time, and once word got out, hundreds of kids like me congregated in one of the sections of the development waiting to get a glimpse of Sly or Walt and their girlfriends.
 
We congregated, the Rolls Royce came, the girlfriend was picked up, and dozens of us chased the Rolls Royce for as far as we could, seeing it drive off in the distance.
 
Again, I don’t remember if it was Sly or Walt, but it was for one of them, it did happen, and I have memories of that day that have lasted more than 50 years.
 
Anyway, back to the song …
 
When I heard “Hot Fun in the Summertime” a few weeks back, it just hit me like it hadn’t hit me before.
 
Subsequently, in between all that I have to do at home and with my remote job and helping my son find a job, I have been digitizing my entire Sly and the Family Stone collection, stuff that I hadn’t listened to in ages.
 
And I can report that the music still sounds so good, so perky, so vital, so alive!
 
I wish I could say the same thing about Sly Stone.
 
Due to drug use and a variety of illnesses, he has not been well now for decades. The last I heard, he was living in his van, nearly broke but not done yet.
 
I also read that his son said that he does sit down at the piano and strokes a couple of notes here and there, but can’t get anything coherent or sustained to come out of his attempts at getting back on the right track.
 
He made bad business deals, spent his money on the proverbial wine, women and song, and every comeback attempt is unsuccessful.
 
In fact, the Family Stone has toured without him for years.
 
It is sad, but Sly Stone’s legacy is his music, and “Hot Fun In the Summertime” is tops with me.
 
If only he could find his own summertime … .