everybody is a star

Once, at Midway Airport in Chicago, stuck waiting at a gate for a delayed flight, I noticed lots of the people around me were carrying what looked like musical instrument cases. So I made some remark like "Are there musicians here?" It was most of the original Sly and the FAmily Stone (Sans Sly and with a few new musicians). I hummed a few bars of "Everybody is a Star" then told the, so far, guys that I had played that song over and over and over as a teen. The guys pointed to the two women singers and said "They are the ones that sang it all along" and then the women sang that song for me, a capella, at our gate. Not the Godfather of Soul but it was a lovely interlude. The band had performed at a WI casino and were flying to CA to perform on the boardwalk in Santa Cruz on July 4th that year. They said if I came to the concert, they would dedicate 'everybody is a star' to me before the audience. I could not make it. And then. . . for real . . . I was on a bus in Berkeley once when a man rolled a gigantic musical case onto the bus. I asked him if he was rolling a cello or a large guitar. He said it was a large bass guitar. Then he went on to say "everything I have is from music, god has given me my musical gift so he could give me everything." as we chatted he told me that Sly (of the family Stone fame) was his first cousin and he had played for Sly's band when it was a big deal. Of course I told that musician about my Midway brief encounter. He was heading to a subway station to busk for money.I wanted to follow him off the bus but I had places to go, people to see. I regret that choice.

It was so lovely listening to those women sing 'everybody is a star' for me at the airport gate. Everyone at the gate applauded when they were done.

I didn't own many albums, like, ever but in h.s. I had some. I really got into Sly and the Family Stone.

I grew up in Chicago, on the South Side. Nearly every weekend, on Fridays, I went to casual dances called sock hops (we did not dance without shoes but that's what they were called. .  ). I believe the term 'sock hops' was coined when students actually had to dance in socks when dances were held in their wooden-floored gyms. By the time I was in high school, we danced on linoleum gym floors, nearly every Friday. There were always live, no-doubt inexpensive cover bands. And our Chicago cover bands played a lot of Chicago music. Black music. Not that Sly's band was all black. He started the band with a white man I met at Midway in Chicago! Those cover bands always covered a lot of the Four Tops, and lots of Motown which was really jumping with music when I was in h.s. in the sixties. So not totally Chicago Sound.

And those cover bands often played 'everybody is a star'.