Just a week before Sly Stone‘s death last month, it was announced that the earliest known Sly and The Family Stone recording would be released as a live album titled The First Family: Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967 on July 18 via High Moon Records. They’ve just shared “I Can’t Turn You Loose” which would end up on 1968’s Dance to the Music. From the album’s liner notes:
For such a straightforward dance number, “I Can’t Turn You Loose” held a remarkably long-lived position in the band’s early repertoire. A holdover from Freddie’s first group, The Stone Souls, it was recorded at the first demo session, an unissued version was subsequently cut for Epic, and the song was still in the set as late as the end of 1968. It was, of course, also turned sideways to become “Turn Me Loose” on A Whole New Thing. With a pulsing pocket that outstrips the gotta-gotta gait of the Stax original, most every rendition of “I Can’t Turn You Loose” was invariably as frenzied and breathless as it is here, but always on point.
“I think it was one of the early ones in development, and you’re trying different things out,” said drummer Greg Errico. “That song just happened to be there at that time.”
Listen to that and watch a trailer for the album below.
The First Family: Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967
I Ain’t Got Nobody
Skate Now
Show Me
What Is Soul?
I Can’t Turn You Loose
Try A Little Tenderness * (CD Only Bonus Track)
Baby I Need Your Loving
Pucker Up Buttercup
Saint James Infirmary
I Gotta Go Now (Up On The Floor) / Funky Broadway