Rock and Roll; Interview with Cynthia Robinson

Robinson: When Sly was on the radio, on KSOL, and he drew a lot of people on to listen to the show. And I myself I preferred KDIA except when Sly Stone was on KSOL and at the time I didn't know that Sly Stone and Sylvester Stewart that I knew were one and the same. So I would always switch to listen to his show. And then I'd turn back to KDIA, just get funky all day. One of the things he opened up his show with was, uh, uh, it was a little thing that went something like -- Listen, all you cats and kitties sitting out there, whipping up and wailing, and jumping up and down and sucking up all that good juice and talking about who the greatest cat in the world is. Well, I want to put a cat on you that was the coolest, swingingest, grooviest cat that ever stomped this sweet, swinging sphere. And they called this here cat -- And then there was this thing that said, Sly Stone! in the background. So that's the way he would start. And that would just, just kick me off. That would just start me off for it. The rest of the show was just, was just, and he'd, you know, improv through it. If something broke down on him he'd play the piano and sing. Even if it took an hour, you know, to fix whatever, you know. He did commercials, Ex-lax, and you'd hear a toilet flush in the back, that was unheard of then. So he was just, uh, he was rad, very rad, yeah. Interviewer: You were telling me how hard it was for a female horn player.

Robinson: Well, in school, um, kids didn't, uh, uh, favor it I guess because the guys played the saxophones and the trumpets and the drums. And the girls and guys would play other reed instruments and so forth, but usually they get, they just gave me a hard time about playing trumpet. And I think one of the main reasons really wasn't a guy thing, it was a friend thing. Maybe if we had a challenge, a horn challenge, and his friend who didn't practice as well, as often, I might beat him out, so I'm sitting in between them and that kinda upset them because then they couldn't chit-chat and so forth. But it left me with the impression that you know no guy in the world would let a girl play the trumpet in his group. So I just decided, well, I'll just go to Sax City and take some music courses because I still wanted to play, you know.