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The work of Sly Stone<\/strong> has long called for a collection like this one. A set bringing together 77 tracks across four discs, it includes not only the obvious hits \u2013 and there were so many<\/em> \u2013 but a pile of fascinating rarities and obscurities.<\/p>\n The rare and\/or unreleased juvenilia on the first disc is perhaps the most fascinating. Right out of the gate, both sides of a very early work credited to Sly Stewart (\u201cI Just Learned to Swim\u201d b\/w \u201cScat Swim\u201d) shows that the man had talent to burn. This pair of 1964 cuts shows Stone to be both a knowing composer of then-trendy pieces (a song trumpeting another manufactured dance craze) and genre-defying excursions (the b-side, with its jazzy middle section). And while his followup single (1965’s \u201cButtermilk, Pt. 1\u201d) is another in pop music’s long history of The Rolling Stones<\/strong>‘ \u201c2120 South Michigan Avenue\u201d rewrites, it does go to show \u2013 if you needed any convincing \u2013 that Stone could, even early on, excel at whatever style toward which he pointed his considerable talents. \u201cDance All Night\u201d (credited to Sly and Freddie) shows Stone on a Stax-y Sam & Dave<\/strong> trip, with some garage rock thrown into the soul stew. The funky \u201cTemptation Walk\u201d (1965) is the last pre-Family Stone<\/strong> track, but it points the clear path toward Stone’s subsequent musical travels.<\/p>\n The Family Stone’s early singles (\u201cI Ain’t Got Nobody\u201d and a barn-burning reading of \u201cI Can’t Turn You Loose\u201d) show the Family Stone’s formula well established, just in time for the big hits to follow.<\/p>\n The single edit of \u201cHigher\u201d distills an already great tune into something arguably even more potent. A half dozen or so tracks from the debut LP (November 1967’s A Whole New Thing<\/em>) are followed with some true rarities, including a demo track (the instrumental \u201cMy Woman’s Head\u201d), an alternate take of \u201cI Get High On You\u201d and a pair of unreleased studio cuts.<\/p>\n The second disc continues with the rarities: five more unreleased (or only released on other reissues) cuts from 1967. \u201cWhat’s That Got to Do With Me?\u201d finds the group heading into Aretha Frankin<\/strong>‘s territory. \u201cFortune and Fame\u201d is a rumination on guess-what done in an unabashed gospel style. \u201cWhat Would I Do\u201d combines the two styles and is even more effective. The single version of \u201cDance to the Music\u201d is another economical edit that works every bit as well as the (now) more familiar album version (not included here). Five cuts from either the original Dance to the Music<\/em> LP (April 1968) or the 2007 expanded reissue fill in the blanks, bringing listeners to a clutch of single masters, powerful mono mixes and a true rarity, \u201cDanse A La Musique\u201d by The French Fries<\/strong>. The sounds-like-a-kazoo fuzztone guitar and squealing combo organ are must-hear highlights of this nominally instrumental track.<\/p>\n The third disc serves up another half dozen rarities, dating from 1968. The albums Life<\/em> (November 1968), Stand! <\/em>(April 1969) and subsequent albums get less representation on Higher!<\/em>; instead the set leans more on the rarities and single masters. The presence of the latter points out that by this period, Sly & the Family Stone’s albums were pretty well designed to be taken as whole works, rather than mere collections of songs. But this set acts more like a companion to the original albums, adding the singles and ephemera to fill gaps in the story.<\/p>\n Because the arc of many musicians’ history generally follows a predictable path, the great pre-fame promise is followed by the hits. And those are followed by late-period, dissolute efforts. So it is with Sly Stone: the last half of Disc Four is the weakest part of the whole collection. \u201cCan\u2019t Strain My Brain\u201d is pleasant enough but offers nothing new, and \u2013 worse yet \u2013 nothing that a bunch of other artists who followed in Stone’s wake hadn’t already done. But the mid 1970s, Sly Stone was no longer a trend setter. 1975’s single \u201cLe Li Lo\u201d is essentially a disco tune that feels like a pastiche of Stone’s early work. It’s even \u2013 shudder \u2013 slick, something that can’t be said of most of the music on Higher!<\/em> (or the original albums). On the solo-credited \u201cFamily Again,\u201d Stone began his practice of resting on \u2013 and worse, explicitly referring to \u2013 his past (it’s from a solo album called Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I’m Back<\/em>; the musical contents of said LP \u2013 and subsequent releases \u2013 strongly suggested otherwise).<\/p>\n For its impressive packaging and cache of rarities, Higher!<\/em> Is an essential addition to any serious music library. But as so often the case with career-spanning collections such as these, most listeners will treasure the first disc for its early revelations, turn slightly less often to the middle discs for their scattered-to-predominant gems, and give up largely on the last half of the fourth disc. Nonetheless, Higher!<\/em> remains a must-have.<\/p>\n