You’ve been sitting much too long
There’s a permanent crease
In your right and wrong
When Sly Stone called his record company representative in May 1974 to tell him that he was engaged to a young actress named Kathy Silva, the rep facetiously suggested that the couple get married before an upcoming Sly and the Family Stone concert at Madison Square Garden.
Sly liked the idea and challenged the rep to make the wedding the biggest event of the year. The record company did its best to hype the event, and those efforts no doubt contributed to the concert drawing 23,000 fans.
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| Sly Stone busses Kathy Silva |
The success of the event did little to revive Sly’s sagging career. Sly and the Family Stone – which hadn’t had a top ten single since 1971 – broke up in January 1975.
Sly Stone and Kathy Silva separated the next year.
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Cajun fiddler and singer Doug Kershaw – best known for “Louisiana Man” – got married in the Astrodome before a Houston Astros-Cincinnati Reds baseball game on a Saturday night about a year after Sly Stone’s Madison Square Garden wedding. Kershaw and his band played a concert after the conclusion of the game, which went 14 innings.
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| Doug Kershaw |
I wasn’t in attendance for Kershaw’s wedding, but I did go to the Astros-Reds game the next day. I was in law school at the time, and was spending the summer interning at a large Houston law firm, which entertained its summer interns lavishly. Surprisingly, the mediocre Astros prevailed over the Reds – who won an MLB-best 108 regular season games that year, and defeated the Red Sox in the World Series.
That's pretty much all I’ve got for you today.
* * * * *
“Stand!” wasn’t Sly and the Family Stone’s biggest hit – it peaked at #22 on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart – but I think it’s their best song. That’s why I chose to induct it into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.
Click here to listen to “Stand!”
Click here to buy the record from Amazon.
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