History
Released in the midst of an eighteen-month stretch from late 1969 to late 1971, during which Sly & the Family Stone released no new material, Greatest Hits was designed by Epic Records to appease consumer demand and keep the band's name and music in the public's eye. Greatest Hits peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200, and was the band's most successful album sales-wise.
The songs from this album were remixed into Quadraphonic format in 1970 - Once as a test mix, and then again for proper release. Both the Test mixes and released mixes contain different running times and alternate or missing vocals/instrumentation to the original versions. Sly Stone and his engineers never got around to making standard stereo mixes of the three non-album singles. Epic had to resort to taking the mono versions and making simulated stereo versions by electronically rechannelling the mono mixes' frequencies. For years, the Quadraphonic LP of this album was the only way to find stereo mixes of "Hot Fun in the Summertime", "Everybody is a Star" and "Thank You". True stereo mixes of these three songs were finally done when the Sly & the Family Stone catalog was digitally remastered in the 1990s. The album was properly reissued by Epic/Legacy in 2007.
The surround sound information on the QUAD LP can be extracted by today's audio-video receivers using the DOLBY PRO LOGIC setting.
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | link |
| Robert Christgau | A+ |
| PopMatters | link |
| Rolling Stone | (favorable) 1970 |
| Rolling Stone (2003 Reissue) |
(favorable) 2003 |
| Warr.org | link |
Read more about this topic: Greatest Hits (Sly and the Family Stone album)
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