BEFORE THE (FAMILY) STONE AGE: THE VISCAYNES
The music and career of Sly Stone and his group The Family Stone is well known. What’s less explored is his earliest work, recordings made when he was still Sly Stewart, a teenager in Vallejo, California. Those original singles are now impossibly rare, though various tunes have surfaced on compilations over the years. But now two new releases – on different labels, unrelated to one another – are compiling music from that early chapter of Stone’s history.
From ORG Music comes The Viscaynes & Friends, a 10-track vinyl LP featuring the seven best (and best-known) sides from Stone’s first pop group, alongside three related tracks. And a CD release, Sly Before the Family Stone features 19 cuts. Some of those feature The Viscaynes as well, and there’s no overlap with the ORG record; Sly Stone completists will want both. And they’ll want to know the back story of The Viscaynes; for that it’s best to turn to Charles “Chuck” Gebhardt, one of the group’s singers.
A coterie of music-minded students at Vallejo High School in the San Francisco Bay area got together in 1961 as a group. Billing themselves as the Viscounts (pronounced VIE-counts) they worked up arrangements of popular vocal group tunes. Vocalist Chuck Gebhardt and his brother Vern were among the members of the group. He admits that when the Viscounts began, they had “not a lot” of musical training or expertise. “Just a lot of singing in back rooms, living rooms, bathrooms … a lot of it at my house on Highland Street in Vallejo,” he says. “Wherever we could do it, really.”
The group’s members had come together through shared interests. All were members of Vallejo High School’s choir, and several took part in stage plays. “We were also in talent shows,” Gebhardt says, which could be an intimidating
