“I Want To Take You Higher” by Sly and the Family Stone

Sly and the Family Stone stuck "I Want to Take You Higher" on the flip side of "Stand!", the top 30 title track of their 1969 album on Epic, and it catches the band at its most exuberant. Where most of Stand! preaches, this one just celebrates music and the rush it gives you. Sly Stone wrote it alone, as usual, reworking "Higher" from 1968's Dance to the Music, a tune that itself grew out of "Advice", which he co-wrote and arranged for Billy Preston's The Wildest Organ in Town in 1966.

Freddie Stone kicks it off with a bluesy guitar riff, then everybody piles in: Larry Graham on bass, Greg Errico on drums, Jerry Martini on sax, Cynthia Robinson on trumpet, Rose and Sly on keyboards, and five of them singing. At Woodstock, Sly had the crowd shouting its call back at him at three in the morning.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.