Sly & the Family Stone - Harlem Cultural Festival, Harlem, NY, 6-29-1969

The posting of this album had an unusual origin. A couple of days ago, I was reading a newspaper article about new movies coming out later this year, now that people are starting to go back to movie theaters again. One of the movies mentioned is a music documentary called "Summer of Soul." It's mostly lost film footage from the Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of concerts in Harlem, New York, in the summer of 1969. I was surprised that I'd never heard of this concert before, because it featured a stellar list of soul artists, including B. B. King, Stevie Wonder, the 5th Dimension, Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Mavis Staples, Mahalia Jackson, David Ruffin, Hugh Masekela, and many more. It was nicknamed the "Black Woodstock," which makes sense because the more famous Woodstock took place a few hundred miles away later that same month. Apparently, 40 hours of footage was shot, but most of it just sat in some archive, forgotten until the rights were secured to make this documentary. It's coming out on July 2, 2021, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it.

You can see the Wikipedia entry about it here:

Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) - Wikipedia

Anyway, while reading up on this documentary, it was mentioned that some of the footage from was aired on TV at the time, but that footage, and the concert series in general, seems to have slipped into a memory hole for decades. However, the article mentioned there was one exception, in that Sly and the Family Stone's film footage that was broadcast on TV at the time was saved and eventually made it onto YouTube. 

Naturally,  I went looking for that. I'd been looking for a good Sly and the Family Stone concert to post here for a long time. The band did a great set at Woodstock, but I don't want to post that because it's widely commercially available. Other than that, there are very few bootlegs of the band, and each one I found have some kind of issue, making them all unworthy for posting.

It seems YouTube took this film footage down a long time ago. But I found a different copy of the same footage on SoulseekQT. (SoulseekQT is amazing, people!) So, after watching it, I converted it to mp3s and cut it up into individual songs. The result is posted here. The sound quality isn't the greatest, but it's pretty good, and this bootleg beats the pants off the other bootlegs I've found.

I've read a few articles about "Summer of Soul," and I haven't found any mention of an album being released to go with the movie. I sure hope there will be one, though. Since there are hours and hours of footage, I hope they release entire sets from the major stars, just as this is the entire Sly and the Family Stone set. If and when that ever happens, I'll take this down. But for now, here it is.

This album is 40 minutes long. It includes the band's entire set. The "talk" tracks all feature the announcer. I edited down his comments some, since he talked about some less interesting stuff.

01 talk (Sly & the Family Stone)
02 M'Lady (Sly & the Family Stone)
03 Sing a Simple Song (Sly & the Family Stone)
04 You Can Make It If You Try (Sly & the Family Stone)
05 Everyday People (Sly & the Family Stone)
06 Dance to the Music (Sly & the Family Stone)
07 Music Lover (Sly & the Family Stone)
08 I Want to Take You Higher (Sly & the Family Stone)
09 talk (Sly & the Family Stone)
10 I Want to Take You Higher [Reprise] (Sly & the Family Stone)
11 talk (Sly & the Family Stone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15265127/SlyandFamS_1969_HarlmCulturalFestivl__6-29-1969_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Sly Stone is a movie still from the upcoming documentary, from the exact concert in question. I found it with one of the articles about the documentary.