FUNK PIONEER SLY DIES AT 82

SLY Stone, the revolutionary musician and dynamic showman, whose group Sly and the Family Stone transformed popular music in the 1960s and '70s died yesterday at age 82

- BY HILLEL ITALIE

Stone, born Sylvester Stewart, had been in poor health in recent years. His publicist Carleen Donovan said Stone died in Los Angeles surrounded by family, after contending with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other ailments.

Founded in 1966-67, Sly and the Family Stone was the first major group to include Black and white men and women, and well embodied a time when anything seemed possible - riots and assassinations, communes and love-ins. The singers screeched, chanted, crooned and hollered. The music was a blowout of frantic horns, rapid-fire guitar and locomotive rhythms, a melting pot of jazz, psychedelic rock, doo-wop, soul and the early grooves of funk.

Sly's time on top was brief, roughly from 1968-1971, but profound. No band better captured the gravity-defying euphoria of the Woodstock era or more bravely addressed the crash which followed.