It took the bandleader, who died Monday, just a few years beginning in the late 1960s to write a new language of rock, soul and pop.

Sly Stone, a onetime SF deejay turned funk innovator and leader of Sly and the Family Stone, sang on and produced an album for a Stockton band.

Born on March 15, 1943, in Denton, Texas, Sylvester Stewart came from a family of devout Christians who took their beliefs with them when they moved to Vallejo, California, a suburb northwest of San Francisco. Reared on church music, he was 8 when he and three of his siblings recorded a gospel single as The Stewart Four.