My Life with Earth, Wind & Fire

by Maurice White

  With the recordings in the can, Bob and I, along with Bruce Lundvall, who was head of Columbia Records America, decided to put together a live album with a few new studio cuts, to be released before Christmas of 1975. The two-record set Gratitude would be the result.

  The live Gratitude album opens up with the instrumental “Africano Power,” a bass, saxophone, and percussion-driven jam we had been developing in the studio and on the stage since 1971. “Africano Power” incorporated jazz fusion, Afro-Cuban jazz, funk, and even more power than our fans had ever heard from us on a record. Another song that made the Gratitude album, “Reasons,” featured a great churchy call-and-response between Philip’s voice and Don Myrick’s saxophone. It crystallized a special moment in time. Philip’s line to the audience after Don’s blazing solo—“He plays so beautiful, don’t you agree?”—would become a part of pop culture, a shout-out that would be Myrick’s public introduction to EW&F fans. Like Peter Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like We Do” and Marvin Gaye’s “Distant Lover,” EW&F’s live version of “Reasons” became way more popular than the studio version, making Philip an African American legend in his own right.

  Meanwhile, another gem from Gratitude, “Sing a Song,” started out with Al plucking away in the backstage tuning room while we were touring in Switzerland. McKay and I wrote the song in probably no more than thirty minutes. Artistically, we worked extremely well together. Originally a drummer, Al brought all those percussive elements to his guitar playing. I was naturally in tune with his grooves, and our writing sessions flowed with ease. One of the jokes about “Sing a Song” is that you can barely understand what I’m singing in the verses, and that’s OK by me. Just as someone can almost hear in your voice when you’re smiling over the phone, I think people hear the energy of where you were when you record a particular song. From the first guitar lick that kicks off the song, you feel its positivity.

  We were cutting grooves every time we had a break, and we would come off the road in an absolute frenzy. Taking those energies right into the studio, we recorded a little Latin-feeling number called “Sunshine.” It’s a simple song, but you can hear the chemistry of our band in a new way. Verdine absolutely crushed it on bass, and I loved playing drums on that tune.

  One thing I knew for sure: Charles’s and George’s input on Way of the World, the Phenix Horns’ arrival, and the Santana musical exchange had the band absolutely burning. We were stretching out. We were an R&B band. We were a jazz band. We were a pop band. We were a world music band. We were an Afro-Cuban band. We were feeling the power of our musical diversity, and so were our audiences.

  “Sing a Song” felt like a natural EW&F song, joyous and hopeful. Still, as a bandleader, I knew I had to keep innovating. Joyous and hopeful is great, but I believed that adding different colors to the song arsenal would increase our artistic range as a band. I wasn’t competing, as such; I just felt EW&F should be a vanguard. To do this, I had to get new energy from sources outside of the band.

  Songwriter Skip Scarbrough would always give me something that only he could give. His songs contributed to much of our signature sound. He had already written “I’d Rather Have You” on Last Days and Time and “The World’s a Masquerade” on Head to the Sky, and later he’d give us “Love’s Holiday” on All ’N All. But “Can’t Hide Love” was a milestone. It was not one of our biggest hits, but it definitely defined a romantic tone for our songs. A group called Creative Source had recorded the song a few years earlier, but we completely changed it, as we almost always did with outside material. The original version was more of a Fifth Dimension kind of vocal sound. We slowed it down significantly and added a new vocal arrangement.

  Skip had a gift for writing love songs that were not only romantic but sensitive to the spiritual and cultural nuances surrounding romantic love. Skip’s way of composing love songs with a philosophical tone made me set a new higher standard for myself in songwriting. Still, a big part of the uniqueness of “Can’t Hide Love” was Stepney’s contribution. Step had known from the day I met him back in Chicago that I was the biggest sucker for John Coltrane. All he had to say was that this was something Trane would do, and I’d be all over it. When he first played the quick whole-tone ascending chord movement in the “Can’t Hide Love” intro, he had me big-time. Ironically, though, it’s the end vocal arrangement in the vamp of the song that people seem to remember. Charles had the strings playing a haunting, almost monastic melody, and Philip and I topped it off. To our fans, it sounded like Philip and I were monks chanting in an old monastery. This was another musical contribution to the EW&F mystique.

  The double album Gratitude was released on November 1, the single “Sing a Song” the following week. “Sing a Song” took off like a rocket, another crossover smash. Its immediate R&B and pop chart rise squashed any doubts about us becoming a one-hit wonder. Gratitude spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard pop albums chart. We also won our first Grammy Award as a group on February 28, 1976, taking home the Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for “Shining Star.”

  Beyond the music successes, important business changes were taking place at the Kalimba Productions office in early 1976. I was coming into my own as a business professional. In the fourteen years of EW&F, I can’t remember once raising my voice. I always played it as cool as a cucumber with the band, employees, and business associates. Still, I was always discovering how to better relate to the people who worked with me, when to push them and when to back off. I was honing my communication skills, at least professionally. I was still woefully unskilled at delegating. Some of that was due to trust issues, and some to a desire to make sure things were done the way I wanted.

  At times I didn’t feel the band fully appreciated all the business mountains that were being moved, all the myriad choices, big and small, taking place—choices that strongly contributed to the rising of EW&F’s star. In their defense, they were pouring themselves into the music, bringing our songs to life in the studio and onstage. Though I too was part of the group, as drummer, producer, and singer, their musical contributions were the distinctive ingredients of the Earth, Wind & Fire drink. Business decisions, however, were the straw that stirred that drink.

  In those early days I ran Kalimba Productions like a record company, signing artists, paying advances, and issuing royalties. But Kalimba wasn’t a record company. What I had was a distribution deal with CBS Records in which I knew what royalty rate I would get, a base from which we could negotiate with each artist. Some of the recording funding came from CBS/Columbia, and some came from my pocket.

  The first artist we signed were three sisters from Chicago, the Emotions. They were originally known as the Heavenly Sunbeams, a young girl gospel-singing group. Ron Ellison, an old associate from Chicago, knew their father, the very enterprising Joe Hutchinson Sr. I had a meeting with them and asked if they had any songs. “Yeah, we have lots of songs,” Wanda Hutchinson said. She launched into four or five songs that would end up becoming a part of their gold debut album, Flowers. Wanda in particular was a great songwriter. One song that caught my ear was “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love.” On the demo she had it at a very slow tempo, with about six or seven different verses. She sang with such raw emotion—she had such a greasy pocket. I could tell she was disappointed when I said, “Wanda, ain’t no songs with six and seven verses.”

  “But Reece, it’s a song about my first love that I broke up with.”

  “Then we’re going to have to speed it up a lot.”

  Which we did. “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” became a template for many songs that came after—punchy, up-tempo, with a very feminine sound on the top. It was very clear that the Hutchinson sisters could harmonize, I mean har-mo-nize! They had a natural blend and bend to their voices, making them sound like one voice with three different notes. They really had a unique sound, rooted in gospel. I wanted to take them to a place that was contemporary without destroying the church in their sound. One of
the first songs I showed them was another composition by Al McKay and myself called “Flowers.”

  “Wanda, check this out. ‘We hold the key to the world’s destiny,’” I sang to her.

  “Oh, we’re doing gospel,” she said. “Great!”

  “Oh no, no, no, it’s not going to be like that.”

  “It sure sounds like gospel to me.”

  Well, it definitely wasn’t gospel. But the girls were so deeply rooted in the church that the gospel flavor and lyrics would always be a part of their sound—never too far away.

  Charles and I clashed more than usual when we were working with the Emotions. Charles heard them in a more traditional three-part harmony. I heard them in a more untraditional way—conventional three-part harmony in one place, unison in another, and even jazz clusters in another. I think all that jumping back and forth suited their voices better. Writing parts for them was easy for me. I heard their voices as horn parts, punchy in some places and smooth and long in others.

  Every time there was a difference of opinion on harmony between us, I would tell Step, “Well, let’s just listen to the girls.” They were our judge and jury. If my idea worked, I’d say, “See, that’s what I’m talking about.” If Stepney’s idea won, he would say, “See, Rooney, I told your ass.”

  As he went through the girls’ harmony note for note on the piano, Stepney realized that the girls were using a lot of flat fifths and minor sevenths. With that knowledge, arranging and writing parts was easier for all of us.

  Getting the Emotions’ album off the ground was the real beginning of Kalimba Productions as a separate entity. I may not have been doing all the different kinds of music I wanted to do, but completing the Emotions album put new desires in my heart. Just like the Emotions, Deniece Williams, then one of Stevie Wonder’s background singers, came into my orbit with great songs. She sent a cassette of seven songs to my office, hoping to get Earth, Wind & Fire to record some of them. She was a hard-core EW&F fan—she used to love to sing all that high Jessica Cleaves stuff from our earlier albums. But as I listened to her tape, song after song, her voice knocked me out. It was very feminine, almost bell-like and yet strong—I haven’t heard anything like her before or since.

  I quickly called her in for a meeting. “Deniece, these songs are great, but your voice is even greater. You need to record these songs, not EW&F.”

  She shook her head. “Oh, no, no, no, Maurice. I don’t want to be a solo artist.”

  All of Deniece’s career calculations had been based on her experience of working with Stevie Wonder. Stevie was a star among stars. After working with him for a few years, Deniece knew for sure that she did not want the responsibility of being the star of the show. Her heroes weren’t stars, they were songwriters—Ashford & Simpson, Carole King. She understood that songwriting and publishing was where it was at in terms of wealth building in the music business. Smart girl. But I kept on pressing her.

  “Deniece, no one can sing these songs like you,” I pleaded. “Let’s do a deal, and I’ll produce an album for you on Columbia Records.”

  “Maurice, my only music business experience has been working with Stevie.”

  “Stevie’s my boy—he’s great!”

  “Yeah, but he’s a bit loosey-goosey—not too organized.”

  “Look, I cannot attest to this or that. And no one, including me, can promise you a hit record.”

  “Well, then, what are you offering?”

  “I’m proposing this: I will do everything I can to facilitate your success, and I promise you it will be a very orderly process.”

  I think I caught her off guard. She looked at me with some disbelief. I looked right back at her with all the resolute confidence in the world. I was no-nonsense. I think it gave her a whole different idea about the music business. I did everything I said I would for Deniece, but it all started with her songs, and she had plenty of them. Deniece wrote or cowrote all but one song on her debut album, This Is Niecy.

  Signing Deniece Williams to Kalimba Productions was a business coup for me. Still, for whatever reason, I was still much more comfortable in the studio than conducting business in the office. The office always represented things I had to do, as opposed to things I wanted to do. In spite of this, I tried to carry myself with dignity. I was subconsciously referencing Billy Davis from the Chess Records days—a black man in a white world who stood above. Thoughts weren’t far away either of my friend Quincy Jones, who went from trumpet player to composer/arranger to Mercury Records vice president to writing musical scores for the movies. Billy Davis and Q were both dignified and organized, and that garnered respect from everyone.

  In the early spring of 1976 I was working on several different albums simultaneously: Ramsey Lewis’s Salongo, as well as the EW&F, Deniece Williams, and Emotions albums. Although I was organized, I had bitten off more than I could chew. Setting out to balance the situation, I tried to recruit as many talented people as I could to keep up with the workload. I coordinated writers, producers, coproducers, and arrangers to keep Kalimba Productions humming along, with Earth, Wind & Fire always the main priority. Other artists and writers would eventually become a part of the Kalimba creative family, like D. J. Rogers, Bernard “Beloyd” Taylor, and Jon Lind, who cowrote “Sun Goddess” and later “Boogie Wonderland.” Besides the home creative team—Stepney, Larry Dunn, Verdine, and Al McKay—other cats like Jerry Peters and Clarence McDonald would do a lot of the Kalimba production chores. Clarence would later cowrite one of Deniece’s biggest and classiest hits, “Silly.”

  16

  Departure

  All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  When we started recording what would become Spirit, our sixth album for Columbia, I had no idea how much life was about to change for me and the band. After the breakthrough of That’s the Way of the World, the crossover smashes of “Shining Star” and “Sing a Song,” it was an exciting and demanding time for me, and for the entire EW&F and Kalimba Productions camp.

  By early 1976 I was under siege with suggestions for songs to listen to and musical directions we should take. The band, management, and anyone around me would give me albums that were hot at the time, thinking that I needed to stay in touch with what was happening. Following my natural inclinations, I listened to sounds that moved me personally. I swear that every day that I could, I listened to Keith Jarrett’s double record The Köln Concert. This live solo piano concert was a milestone in my musical life, and Keith continued to be a major musical influence. I know that may sound odd, but his dedication to improvisation on such a high and idiosyncratic level moved me beyond words. It was also calming and healing music for me. Even though we were in different musical landscapes, Keith Jarrett’s music helped clear my head.

  Now, of course, Earth, Wind & Fire could not do an album like Keith Jarrett’s, but we could be inspired by his uniqueness. By the time we started planning Spirit, the band had started to record demos religiously, so I kind of knew what was going to ultimately fly in the end product. But Verdine gave me a tape of a song by two young writers, Beloyd Taylor and Peter Cor, and it just blew me away. “Getaway” had everything that had become the EW&F sound, the spiritual as well as the musical. It was rare to receive a song so tailored for us.

  Watch for the signs that lead in the right direction

  Not to heed them is a bad reflection

  They’ll show you the way into what you have been seeking

  To ignore them you’re only cheating

  So come, take me by the hand, we’ll leave this troubled land

  I know we can getaway

  —“Getaway,” Spirit, 1976

  The demo for “Getaway” had this blazing, almost jazzy bebop intro. It was long, and in my stupidity, I thought I should get rid of it. “Motherfucker, are you crazy?” said Charles. “That kicks off the whole song!” Needless to say, he was right. “Getaway” ushered in a ne
w era in the power in our sound. Its percussive horn punches are almost frantic. From that point forward that kind of sonic kinetic energy would be a part of Earth, Wind & Fire. That’s the Way of the World was a career turning point, but “Getaway” was a musical one. It really put the heat in the Earth, Wind & Fire sound.

  While all this was going on, I did not realize that Charles was sick. We were together damn near all the time when I wasn’t on the road. Charles smoked and ate with reckless abandon and drank soft drinks almost constantly. He also perspired a lot and sometimes seemed winded, and he’d started to put cotton in his ears to alleviate the pain. Years later, I discovered that ringing in the ears is a sign of high blood pressure.

  One day Charles said out of the clear blue, “Hey, Rooney, if anything ever happens to me, call Tom-Tom”—Tom-Tom Washington, an arranger we both knew from Chicago. Although I thought his words were odd, I didn’t respond.

  We were recording at Hollywood Sound when Step got a call, probably from Rubie, his wife. He said something about his pills, and that he wasn’t feeling well. He hung up the phone and said he was going to go back to his hotel, the Holiday Inn up on Highland Boulevard, and he’d return in a few. Later he was found in his room unconscious, but alive. He’d had a heart attack.

  He was rushed to Century City Hospital. The doctor said his heart was very weak. Although he seemed to get better day by day, he realized he wasn’t going to be able to finish recording Spirit with us. Charles had done all the string and horn arrangements for the album, with the exception of three songs. Tom-Tom Washington finished one song, but I thought Jerry Peters, who had written a song for the record, would take the arranging reins to round out the project. Jerry was another one of those cats who were part of the EW&F family. He had known Al McKay since the age of fifteen.