Listen: I Just Learned How To Swim / Sly Stewart SlySwim.mp3

This Swim dance craze cash-in is a nice low budget rip off of The Downliners Sect’s ‘Little Egypt’, at least to these ears. Sly Stewart was at the time (1965), a hip San Francisco dj as well as overseeing in house production for the city’s Autumn Reocrds and it’s subsidiary imprints, North Beach and Loma. Seemingly more tied to the Anglo rock and psychedelic scene than RnB or soul, it wouldn’t be long before he turned down his legendary path.

Listen: Scat Swim / Sly Stewart SlyScat.mp3

It’s on the single’s b side, ‘Scat Swim’, where those first indications of the funk leanings that would become Sly & The Family Stone can be heard. Check out the bluesy jazz breakdown about one third of the way in, and that first vocal moment of what would soon become Sly Stone.