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Rock 100: Sly and the Family Stone

David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Cooper Square Books (reissue), 1999

JIMI HENDRIX WAS THE FIRST BLACK TO PLAY acid rock, but he remained a black musician playing to white audiences; he did not get played on soul stations. When Sly and the Family Stone's first album A Whole New Thing appeared in 1967, it was such a radically new sound that initially neither soul nor white rock audiences knew quite how to react to it.

Total word count of piece: 1181

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