SPACED COWBOY: A REFLECTION ON SLY STONE

Written By: KANDIA CRAZY HORSE

On Friday, June 6th, 2025, three days before Sly Stone joined the Ancestors, I received in the post a lost album by his band, Sly & the Family Stone, called The First Family: Live At Winchester Cathedral 1967 (High Moon Records). When I was giddy to get a press release last week announcing this project, there was no sense that Sly would soon be leaving this earthly plane, and his loss is a shock, especially amidst Black Music Month. So this earliest live recording of him and his hyper-legendary group that
transformed soul, pop, funk, rock, gospel & psychedelia is most welcome.

The First Family was captured at Redwood City, California’s venue, Winchester Cathedral, where Sly & the Family Stone served as their resident band between December 1966 and April 1967. Their debut album, A Whole New Thing, would be released in October 1967. This live album will be available digitally, on CD, and LP, with the latter formats containing liner notes by producer Alec Palao, interviews with Sly Stone and his family
of band members, and unearthed photos, etc.

The First Family features the Family Stone that would soon be world- renowned in another year, minus sister Rose. The release’s opening track “I Ain’t Got Nobody (For Real)” has most of the hallmarks of their later songs, including funky organ and percussive horns. It is plaintive but upbeat. This set is devoid of banter between tunes, but Sly Stone kicks it off with a brief introduction: “This is an original tune!” Song two, a cover of “Skate Now,” has a great breakdown with tambourine from Jerry Martini. Next, Joe Tex’s “Show Me” is like Sly being backed by the Mar-Keys and Bar-Kays, who supported Otis Redding live and in-studio. A few songs forward on an
actual cover of Otis’ “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” it foreshadows the tandem vocals that would become a key part of future Family Stone songs. And| their take on the traditional standard “St. James Infirmary” is dominated by wonderful trumpet from Cynthia Robinson that sounds pathos. Emerging from the period of San Francisco’s Summer of Love, when white hippies were appropriating black and indigenous cultures, these vintage soul covers foreground how Sly Stone would ultimately revolutionize music globally through his synthesis of the sonic styles au courant in that city then.

There’s been a lot of energy around Texas-born Sly Stone in recent times between the drop of this live album as a Record Store Day treasure in April 2025, the October 2023 release of his autobiography, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) A Memoir, and the Questlove documentary Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) from January 2025. I am still making my way through the tome, but I did see the documentary. I felt the first half charting his ascent was good, but the part that delved into Sly’s later years and dissolution suffered from not having him present in the film. Another demerit was the fact that Questlove did not challenge his friends
like D’Angelo to actually break down exactly what the nature and burden of black genius is and how it affected Sly or themselves as artists. Fortunately, in the obituary, Sly’s family has related that he recently completed the screenplay of his life story, and it will be shared with the world.

Almost immediately after the news circulated that Sly Stone had walked on and I posted some favorites of his songs – “Jane Is A Groupee,” “Stand!,” “Spaced Cowboy” – I thought of his friend and sonic contributor: Kentucky-born singer-songwriter Jim Ford. Sly said of Ford that he was the “baddest white man on the planet.” Ford dated my beloved Bobbie Gentry and perhaps composed one of her hits. Born in Paintsville, KY, he stated that
he came from a “very raw coal-mining background” and ultimately escaped it to follow the lures west to the Golden State. Out there, befriending them like Jimi Hendrix, he met indigenous musicians Pat and Lolly Vegas – later of Redbone – and collaborated on music with them. In an interview the month after I was born in 1971 on The Dick Cavett Show, Sly cited Ford’s
“beautiful” songwriting after stating: “In order to get to it, you gotta go through it.” When Dick Cavett queries, “Who said that Emerson or Thoreau?” Sly replies, “Jimmy Ford.” Apparently, Sly’s favorite Ford song was “Go Through Sunday.” Well, my most cherished of his tunes are “Harlan County” (“In the back hills of Kentucky, I was raised, in a shack on Big Bone Mountain”), “Big Mouth USA” (the slow country version), “I’m
Gonna Make Her Love Me,” the aptly named for our “roots are rising” times “If I Go Country,” “Harry Hippie” (also recorded famously by Bobby Womack), “Happy Songs Sell Records, Sad Songs Sell Beer,” and the stellar country-funk of “Rising Sign.” I must pause here to thank my brothaman, DJ Duane Harriott, and his fellow former Other Music employees in NoHo NYC for turning me on to Jim Ford when his lone 1969 album Harlan County – including arrangements by Lolly Vegas -- was reissued.
My most beloved country singers of all-time are Jim Ford, Gram Parsons, Kris Kristofferson, and Tom T. Hall. Among them, Ford is unique for having served as an inspiration to and worked with Sly Stone on his magnum opus There’s A Riot Goin’ On – he is in the album’s cover collage. Sly and Jim these two visionaries, were meant to make music together. Now they are together again in the Spirit World.

On his beloved song “Everyday People,” Sly Stone told listeners that “I am no better and neither are you / We are the same whatever we do.” His sister Rose declaimed “different strokes for different folks.” My favorite quote posted to my Facebook profile has always been: Different strokes for different folks & so on & so on & scooby-doo-bee-doo-bee Oooohhh sha- sha [“We got to live together!”]. This is what I truly believe.

I was born into a household and social milieu where Sly & The Family Stone’s music was ubiquitous. Sly’s impact on black music was everywhere on the radio and the stereo so seamless it seemed to have always been that way. Yet it wasn’t until I was around 13 years old and first saw the film of the 1969 Woodstock festival on PBS that the full magnitude of what the Family Stone had been was made clear. In thinking about Woodstock, it’s the black and brown performances that stand out and endure the most: (my prime musical influence) Richie Havens, Jimi Hendrix, Santana. And Sly, who came along with other psychedelic rock bands from San Francisco, exploding onstage at 3 am on August 17, 1969, driving through “You Can Make It If You Try,” a “Music Lover” medley, and the much-celebrated “I Want To Take You Higher.” The performance is so indelible and framed by the filmmakers such that it perpetually resonates as the apex of the Family Stone’s career in my mind. Sly provided a benediction for the freedom- seekers of Woodstock Nation.

Sly Stone revolutionized black music specifically and music in general with his funk and rock & roll innovations in the 1960s just as his black rock peers, Arthur Lee did with psychedelia and punk, and Jimi Hendrix did with upgrading the blues and by inventing eco-metal. James Brown is the progenitor of The Funk, but Sly took it in new directions and subsequently influenced everyone from Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, the Jackson Five, The Temptations, Betty Davis, Parliament-Funkadelic (George Clinton was a close friend & collaborator), Earth Wind & Fire, and Stevie Wonder down through the songlines to Prince, Human League (“(Keep Feeling)
Fascination”), Public Enemy, Glen Scott (hear his melancholic and spacey “The Way I Feel,” which quotes Sly’s “Loose Booty” with its refrain “Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego”), Kendrick Lamar, and OutKast.

Sly Stone told Dick Cavett on another appearance in 1970: “everyone is an influence.” Yet few have had such a vast and stalwart imprint on popular music and culture as Sly, whose changes were not solely sounds and souls but also sartorial, as one of the male commentators in Sly Lives! ratifies. Sly was also a cosmic traveler who espoused a world view of black and white, men and women all living and being together on higher ground. Sly Stone influenced me through his particular genius; my song “Soul Yodel #3” from my debut solo album Stampede was directly from the Source of his “Spaced Cowboy,” which features him in soulful honky-tonk mode yodeling. I have also written a “Soul Yodel #1,” which I hope to record before the end
of 2026.

As a still-emerging artist in country-adjacent music, I have been in the trenches for ages, striving hard to make great music inspired by
Appalachian folk and other southeastern elements as an indigenous creator in a space counter to what the New York Times’s “In the Age of the Algorithm, Roots Music Is Rising” article from earlier in June did to belatedly acknowledge a long-standing “trend” and anoint certain come- lately old-timey and honky-tonk acts as predominant in the roots music sphere. When I reflect on my efforts, I can’t help but identify with the following “Underdog” lyrics by Sly Stone’s from the same year as the new live album since he deserves to be firmly situated on the rock & roll Rushmore and have symposia devoted to him and his works, among other laurels:

“Hey dig!
I know how it feels to expect to get a fair shake
But they won’t let you forget
That you’re the underdog and you’ve got to be twice as good (yeah yeah)
Even if you’re never right
They get uptight when you get too bright
Or you might start thinking too much, yeah (yeah yeah)
I know how it feels when you know you’re real
But every other time
You get up, you get a raw deal, yeah (yeah yeah)”

Today, as I have been scribing these reflections on Sly Stone, I saw the sad news of The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson walking on. It’s so unbelievable within days of each other, we should lose the two certifiable musical geniuses of the 1960s. And I also happened to see both Sly and Brian live in their later years. Considering their mutual drug abuse and mental issues it was miraculous to see them in fine form. I fell in love with an ex at Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds Tour installment in Philadelphia, PA at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts on Bastille Day 2000. Sly’s the Family Stone featuring Sly himself I also saw for free in Lenapehoking (NYC) at
BB King Blues Club off Times Square in late 2007. The chance to see Sly Stone in person was life-altering in itself, but to also see him play was divine. I don’t recall the setlist, but the excitement of the Family Stone experience persists.

At a time when America is again turbulent and its people in turmoil, the loss of Sly Stone feels like a shot straight to the heart. His open heart remains manifest in us all. As I delve further into his catalog anew, digging on other favorites like “Luv ‘N Haight,” “Runnin’ Away,” and “Time For Livin,” I ponder how I will continue to work Sly as inspiration into the music I make with my Native Americana trio Cactus Rose NYC. It is clear I must harken to his deep humanitarian messages and consider how to channel the ways he utterly transformed the world. And above all, follow Sly Stone Spaced Cowboy’s prime directive unto the Cosmos: everybody is a star.

Black American-Run Country Music Associations Needed to Make a Comeback—Here’s Why

Are predominantly white institutions (PWIs) the end-all, be-all answer to tackling the country Music diversity dilemma? I think not.

Written By: Johnaé De Felicis

Charley Pride

Becoming a trailblazing Country Music superstar was an improbable destiny for Charley Pride considering his humble beginnings as a sharecropper’s son on a cotton farm in Sledge, Mississippi. His unique journey to the top of the music charts includes a detour through the world of Negro league, minor league and semi-pro baseball as well as hard years of labor alongside the vulcanic fires of a smelter. But in the end, with boldness, perseverance and undeniable musical talent, he managed to parlay a series of fortuitous encounters with Nashville insiders into an amazing legacy of hit singles and tens of millions in record sales.

Growing up, Charley was exposed primarily to Blues, Gospel and Country music.

On the heels of Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” release, Black country artists had their mainstream moment amongst the genre’s fans. It was long overdue since it was us who helped create and pioneer country music, though racist industry politics have blocked most of our artists from shining in the big leagues. 

Reflecting on the genre’s beginnings, Indigenous pride comes to mind. Charley Pride, the first mainstream Black country artist, made big waves in this country music category. Yet, he experienced mislabeling in the same way that reclassified Indigenous Black Americans have in the U.S. “They used to ask me how it feels to be the ‘first colored country singer,‘ then it was ‘first Negro country singer,’ then the ‘first Black country singer.’ Now I’m the first African-American country singer.′ That’s about the only thing that’s changed,” he shared with The Dallas Morning News in 1992. 

Before Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter release, only a handful of Black country artists had achieved commercial recognition—Darius Rucker, Mickey Guyton, and Linda Martell, to name a few. Then you have accomplished artists like K-Michelle, who crossed over from R&B and other genres to country music, just to land back at square one and climb an uphill battle for a seat at the table. 

To date, only three Black country artists out of hundreds have been inducted into the Country Hall of Fame. And while Nashville’s Country Music Association claims to champion diversity and inclusion, I can’t help but think that it’s merely a performative response to societal pressure. Industry gatekeepers still don’t welcome Black country artists with open arms, no matter how talented they are. We saw that with Beyoncé.  Colonial-run institutions continue to move the line for what’s considered “country,” conveniently weaponizing this issue as an excuse to deny Black artists their deserved record deals and radio play. My observation of country music fans is that they don’t care if you’re black, white, yellow, purple, or blue. They just want damn good music. The institutions are guilty of rejecting many country artists of color by refusing to kick down their invisible white picket fence. Still, now that artists can directly reach their fans with social media, their “blessing” doesn’t matter anymore. It never did. 

As an artist and creative of color, I think I speak for us all when I say that we are past fighting for acceptance in predominantly white spaces. With the rise of emerging Black country artists, the case for Black American-run associations comes into play.

The History of Black Country Music Associations

Cleve Francis, M.D.

Singer, Songwriter, Performer and Physician (Photo by Rena Schild)

In 1995, a Black country artist collective aimed to ‘unblur’ the genre’s color lines. With that came the Black Country Music Association’s inception. Founded by country performer Cleve Francis, the Association challenged the status quo and the narrative of our musicians and our music. They went out of their way to ensure that the underdogs were given their flowers and considered as more than an afterthought, opening doors that they otherwise may not have been able to walk through themselves.  Francis departed from the organization in 1996, leaving country songwriter and performer Frankie Staton to become its frontrunner. The association cultivated a community amongst Black country artists magically. For example, they hosted their Black Country Music Showcase at Nashville’s famous Bluebird Cafe, a historic landmark and songwriter’s haven for testing new songs.

Thanks to the Black Country Music Association, ignored artists who needed a leg up in the business had an extra lifeline. The leaders, as country artists themselves, generously educated their successors on the industry’s ins and outs. 

The Black Country Music Association had an active presence in the late 1990s and early 2000s but has since dissolved. Yet, its legacy continues to live on. Two years ago, the Country Music Hall of Fame acknowledged the Association in their exhibit, American Currents: State of the Music. Today’s younger organizations, like the Black Opry and Nashville Music Equality, carry the torch in fighting for industry equity. 

From BCMA to Black Opry 

The Black Opry

Black Opry is home for Black artists, fans and industry professionals working in country, Americana, blues, folk and roots music.

In 2021, researchers from the University of Ottowa found that the 400 country artists in the US include only 1% who identify as Black and 3.2% who identify as BIPOC. Organizations like Black Opry, a modern-day twist on the Black Country Music Association, seek to change that. Its community of Black country, folk, blues, and Americana artists is boldly ushering in a new generation of Black country artists. Founder Holly G. started the Black Opry in April 2021 to advocate for country artists of color. What started as a community blog has since expanded to a huge movement of emerging Black country artists. The Black Opry comprises more than 90 musicians who have been featured in over 100 shows to date. Black Opry acts get ample stage time to sing and perform on their instruments, with other members doing backup vocals, giving them equal attention and visibility. I’m proud of this community for creating a safe space for marginalized country artists, ensuring that they go through the music journey as part of a supportive and active community of performers.

Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter release also opened the floodgates of widespread support for the Black Opry, as the album features members of the collective. The community exists as much for the fans as it does for the artists, further bridging the gap between the two groups. As a folk musician myself, I’ve come to realize that there’s an audience for everyone, regardless of skin color. 

Supporting The Future of Black Country Music

Linda Martell

A pioneering force hailed as the unsung hero of the genre, Linda Martell (82), was the first commercially successful Black female artist in country music. Martell had the highest peaking single on the Billboard Hot Country Singles (now Songs) chart at #22, “Color Him Father,” by a Black female country artist in the history of the genre in 1969, until Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ’Em” debuted at #1 on February 21st, 2024. Martell was notably the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry stage.

Black country pioneers who paved the way for today’s artists, from Charley Pride to Linda Martell, faced roadblocks that we likely couldn’t fathom. Today’s Black country music associations are in place to keep those following in their footsteps from experiencing similar obstacles. Thanks to technology and social media cutting out the middleman, opportunities in country music are now more accessible than ever.  Supporting each other also goes a long way. Cowboy Carter introduced us to some newer Black faces in country music who have been putting in work for years, like Tanner Adell and Reyna Roberts. And then you have hybrid artists like Shaboozey and Breland who are innovatively merging the worlds of country and hip-hop.  

These artists are what country music needs to evolve in a forward-moving direction. They’re pushing boundaries in a way that we haven’t seen before, and it’s a breath of fresh air. There’s no limit on how far these rising talents can go, especially with a strong, sustained community like ours backing them. 

~Thinking~

POEM
Written By: D~Parker

Sitting back thinking about things I was taught growing up. 

Thinking about times, I was dealing with things I don't speak about.

Thinking about times, when I kept smiling on the outside but was worried about things on the inside.

Thinking about all of the obstacles I have faced all I could do was pray and keep pushing forward. 

Thinking about my grandmother and taking her advice to heart. 

Thinking about ways I can be a better version of myself.

Thinking about why we are stuck in survival mode instead of living life to the fullest. Then realizing survival mode is what has carried us this far.

Thinking about generational curses and past traumas.

Thinking about ways to heal and move past them.

Then it hits me, that pivotal moment an epiphany if one must say. 

It's all small steps to a giant and with this, I continue my day. 

(Revised)

( Random thoughts)
D~Parker 12.16.2024

History Speaks: The Black Experience in Southeast Kentucky

Written By: Emily jones Hudson

History Speaks: The Black Experience in Southeast Kentucky is a series that shares the stories of African Americans living in the hills of Southeast Kentucky. Our roots are deep in the mountains but have stretched beyond these hollowed hills. Voices from the past and present herald the presence of Black life in these mountains and quietly whisper: "We were here." "We are still here."

Emily Jones Hudson
I spent my early "growing up" years in Hazard, Kentucky struggling to reconcile my identity as and African American and an Appalachian. A Black person living in the hills of Southeast Kentucky. Coming Full Circle introduces my quest for identity and explains my passion to share the stories of African Americans living in these mountains, past and present.

Coming Full Circle was originally published in my book, Soul Miner, A Collection of Poetry and Prose, in 2017 and revised for my column, History Speaks: Voices From Southeast Kentucky.

Coming Full Circle

They say these mountains separate. They say these mountains isolate. When I was young and growing up in these mountains, they kept the world out. I grew up to embrace these mountains, their history and story; they became etched in my soul. I was raised up listening to my father’s stories of coal-camp life and to his version of Jack Tales; to grandpa’s stories of hunting in the woods, burying sweet potatoes in the ground, of working his farm up on the hill and a mine below the hill. These mountains’ hold grew strong on me.

It was not until I began my journey beyond the boundary of these mountains that I was able to meet you, my beautiful African sister. You told me stories from the Motherland, the cradle of civilization. I told you Mother Earth stories. You draped your body in a beautiful rainbow of colors. I dressed in blue jeans and hiking boots. And then we shared the woman-secrets passed down from mothers and grandmothers, from generation to generation. These woman-secrets kept them strong. They had to be strong to survive. We found a common bond. You taught me of the Motherland, and I began to understand why you walked so proud with head held high. We discovered that Motherland and Mother Earth were one in the same.

But soon the mystique of my mountains awakened from deep within and began to call me. I knew my journey was home bound. I wanted to bring my beautiful African sister home with me to meet my mountain sisters. You came. I now embrace a triad of cultures: African, African-American, and Appalachian.

Home. These mountains are home to me. Mother Earth. It was here in these mountains that I grew into womanhood. I say “grew” into womanhood because early childhood years were tom-boy years. I played rough and tough with my brothers. I thought I was no different. I climbed the apple trees in grandpa’s yard on Town Mountain. I climbed the coal cars that straddled the tracks across from my uncle’s house in Kodak. We built forts above our house and named them Fort Boonesboro and Fort Harrodsburg. I thought I was no different.

As I grew older, I learned to appreciate the mountains, their quietness and stillness. They became my friend as I would spend countless hours living beneath the treetops lost in my dreams. What did it mean to be a young woman growing up in these Southeastern Kentucky hills? What did it mean to be a young black woman growing up in these mountains? You see, I felt there was no difference.

I loved the life of tradition. I grew up watching my mother quilt, canned tomatoes and put up beans. My father grew corn upon the hill behind the house. I remember the Sunday trips to the coal camp to visit my Uncle Ralph and Aunt Frankie. It was always dusk when we would catch a glimpse of my uncle coming up the holler wearing coal dust on his face and carrying an old dinner bucket. I dreamed of writing music, playing my guitar, and becoming a country music singer. It seemed such a simple life. My mountains kept out anything that threatened to upset that simplicity.

And then I left the shelter of my mountains as daddy sent me off to college to follow my brother. Berea College welcomed me with open arms, and I found that I could still maintain some of that simplicity and Appalachian flavor. It was here during my college years that I was exposed to true cultural diversity. Coming from a small mountain town where everyone was related one way or another, I had never before seen so many people of color all together at once! I was introduced to my African brothers and sisters. I became enchanted and obsessed with finding my roots and discovering how they linked together. I was enticed to look into my mirror. I saw two women I did not know. The first woman carried a peace and freedom sign and invited me to march to Selma with her. The second woman walked so graceful with a basket balanced atop her head and beckoned me to join her at the Congo. I was intrigued and mystified and wanted to know more about the women who extended their hands in greeting to me from my mirror.

I began to learn about the rich African culture and how early civilization was there in the ancient cradle. I discovered a whole new world, and I began to think, “I have missed so much life while being rocked and sheltered in the arms of my mountains.”

Then an incident occurred that turned my mirror inside out. I was one of the founding team members that started the campus radio station, one of three African-American students and the only female. My program included contemporary rhythm and blues and many times I worked the night-owl shift. During my senior year as I began to think about graduation and job hunting, a friend convinced me to make a demo tape and send it to radio stations. I mulled it over in my mind. Three years’ experience working for the campus radio station. First female disc jockey. Surely, I would not have any problems finding a job with a radio station. I sent my resume and cover letter to a Black radio station in Indianapolis. I had visited relatives there often and that was the choice radio station to listen to. Before long I received a reply. They were so impressed with my resume and requested a demo tape. I put the demo tape together, rushed it to them and then played the anticipation game. I just knew they had a job for me based on their reply to my resume. Their second response, however, was not what I expected to hear: “There must be some kind of mistake. This can’t possibly be the same person on the demo tape that sent the resume.” And then there it was: “You don’t SOUND black! You sound like a hillbilly!” That is what they essentially said. I still have the demo tape buried in a trunk, but I did not try to bury my accent, that part of my cultural background. But that incident caused me to look harder and longer into my mirror.

After graduation I did make it to Indianapolis to work for a Black-owned weekly newspaper. I was the women’s editor and the only female reporter in the male-dominated newsroom. I still listened to that choice radio station. Eventually I landed in Cleveland where I spent 12 years getting to know the other women in the mirror. I worked for an organization that was female-led and culturally oriented. I was exposed to so much more of my African-American culture as well as African heritage. The founder and owner of the organization later admitted that she did not know how to take me at first. She said I was too light to be black. I was living on the west side of Cleveland in Parma where Black folks just did not live. And then I opened my mouth, there was that accent. She was not aware that African Americans lived in Southeast Kentucky. She was only seeing what the media chose to show.

As our local history has written, I found that many African-Americans living in Cleveland were born and raised in the hills of Southeast Kentucky, but they did everything they could to shed that suit and put on another, including dispensing of their accent. They blended in. They had been there too long and had no intention of ever returning to the mountains to live. But I could not change suits; if anything, I wanted to add different apparel to my wardrobe.

The mountains kept calling me home. As people told me, “You’re not Black enough for the city,” the mountains reminded me of my true home. I brought my new-found friends from the looking-glass with me; they were now part of me. I returned to the mountains like so many prodigal sons and daughters before me. I had come full circle.

These mountains no longer separate. These mountains no longer isolate. And yes, you can come home again.