Songfacts®:

• "Dance To The Music" is the song that put Sly & the Family Stone on the map. The title track and lead single from their second album, it was their first hit, and also served as a great introduction to the band.
  
  The song was written and produced by group leader Sylvester Stewart, better known as Sly Stone. He assembled an unconventional band to deliver his particular brand of funky soul, and in "Dance To The Music" they get a roll call.
  
  Guitarist Freddie Stone (Sly's brother) sings on the first verse:
  
  All we need is a drummer
  For people who only need a beat
  
  Cue the drummer, and it's a white guy: Gregg Errico - not what you expect in a soul band.
  
  Later, bass player Larry Graham introduces himself, running a riff after singing the lines:
  
  I'm gonna add a little guitar
  And make it easy to move your feet
  
  Sly comes in with his organ, then the horns get a shout-out:
  
  Cynthia and Jerry got a message
  
  Trumpet player Cynthia Robinson is the one who hollers "Get up, dance to the music!" at the beginning of the song. She was a trailblazer, taking up trumpet when it was a very male-dominated instrument. Her partner in the horn section was Jerry Martini, another white guy.
  
  By the end of the song, we're familiar with the band, which became one of the biggest acts of the late '60s and early '70s. The first of their three #1 hits, "Everyday People," came the following year.
• Sly Stone kept the focus on the groove by making the lyrics simple and repetitive. He also used vocals as a percussion element, breaking it down to sing, "boom boom, boom boom boom" at two points in the song. He did something similar on their 1969 track "I Want To Take You Higher," where he repeats, "Boom shaka-laka-laka."
• Sly & the Family Stone drummer Greg Errico recalled the story of the song to Uncut: "Most of our stuff in those days came together over time. It wasn't a preconceived thing. Cutting the track, we got the strong beat that everyone could log onto, then it came together in layers. The different parts came together over time. One thing inspired the next thing, which inspired the next thing."
  
  Erroco added: "It had some unusual elements in it. You had the groove, but it was very intricate when it came to the voices. You had Freddie, Larry and Sly all taking verses, and addressing everybody in the band. Then you had this breakdown, when it was just the vocals doing this three-part counter-harmonic vocal interlude which court your ear. Then it comes back in with the drum lead, and 'Dance to the music!' I mean you could not turn away from it. It had everything."
• When Sly Stone sings, "Ride, Sally, ride," that's a reference to a line in the Wilson Pickett hit "Mustang Sally."
• This song and album helped launch the "psychedelic soul" sound of the early '70s. The Temptations, The Impressions, The Four Tops, The Jackson 5 and The Undisputed Truth were all influenced by Dance To The Music - at least the sound. These groups generally had a unified look and some choreography, but Sly & the Family Stone didn't plan out stage moves or costumes.
  
  Joel Selvin in his book For the Record: Sly & the Family Stone: An Oral History puts their impact in perspective: "There are two types of black music: black music before Sly Stone, and black music after Sly Stone."
• Many of us have very fond memories of this song, and the band clearly embraced it in live performances, but apparently they wanted nothing to do with it. Jerry Martini told Rolling Stone that Sly did this song just to placate their record label, which was pressuring him for a hit. "He hated it," Martini said. "It was so unhip to us."
• The band performed this in their set at Woodstock in 1969. They didn't take the stage until 3:30 a.m. on Day 2, but they were worth staying up for, as their performance was hailed as one of the best - "Dance To The Music" and two other songs from their set were included on the official soundtrack.
• Jerry Martini played both saxophone and clarinet on this track - he used a 1958 Beauvais clarinet that he had first used back in high school. Errico recalled how they usually recorded the horns last.
  
  "Sometimes the horns would be there, but usually that would be developed and opened up later on. On 'Dance to the Music, there's a little part that Jerry does with the soprano sax. It came right at the final stages. We were playing the track back over the studio speakers in the control room, really loud, and Jerry grabs his soprano and starts playing that line. He was marching around like the Pied Piper. Sly stops the tape and says, 'Get back in the Booth, man, you're recording that!'"