The story of Earth, Wind & Fire

Memphis, Chicago and the drum stool

The story begins in Memphis, Tennessee, where Maurice White was born on the nineteenth of December 1941. He grew up in South Memphis, living for a while with an elderly neighbour in the Foote Homes projects, and one of his childhood friends was Booker T. Jones, the future leader of Booker T. and the M.G.'s. The two boys even put together a little band at Booker T. Washington High School. Maurice made regular trips north to Chicago to see his mother, Edna, and his stepfather, Verdine Adams, a doctor who also played the saxophone. As a teenager he moved to Chicago for good, studied at the Chicago Conservatory of Music and played drums in the city's nightclubs. To his friends and family he was known simply as Reese.[1] [2]

In 1962 Maurice was drumming in a student jazz trio at Crane Junior College called the Jazzmen, alongside the trombonist Louis Satterfield and the saxophonist Don Myrick. Both names will come back later in this story. The Jazzmen grew into a band called the Pharaohs, and Maurice found steady work as a session drummer at Chess Records, the great Chicago label for blues and soul. He played behind Etta James, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy and the Impressions. One record he drummed on, Fontella Bass's Rescue Me, with Satterfield on bass, became a worldwide hit in 1965. It was a first class musical education, and it showed him from the inside how a hit record gets built.[1] [2] [3]

In June 1966 Maurice left Chess to join the Ramsey Lewis Trio, the jazz group that had just scored a huge crossover hit with The In Crowd. He replaced the drummer Isaac Red Holt, and a song from his very first album with the trio, Hold It Right There, won a Grammy. Around this time Maurice wandered into a Chicago drum shop and found an African thumb piano called a kalimba. He fell for its soft, bell like sound. On the trio's 1969 album Another Voyage, a tune called Uhuru became the first recording of Maurice playing it. The kalimba would become his signature, and he later described it as his personal link to Africa.[1] [2] [3]

By 1969 Maurice had teamed up with two Chicago friends, the singer and songwriter Wade Flemons and the keyboard player Don Whitehead. They wrote songs and jingles for commercials around town, and landed a deal with Capitol Records under the name the Salty Peppers. Their single La La Time was a modest hit in the Midwest, but the follow up, Uh Huh Yeah, went nowhere. Maurice decided Chicago was too small for what he had in mind. He moved to Los Angeles and asked his younger brother Verdine, a teenage bass player who had studied with a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, to follow him. Verdine arrived in Los Angeles on the sixth of June 1970.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The elements, and a false start

The band needed a new name, and Maurice looked to the stars. He was a Sagittarius, and in classical astrology that sign's main element is fire, with seasonal qualities tied to earth and air. So he called the band Earth, Wind and Fire, and left out water, the fourth element. He held auditions and added guitarist Michael Beal, reed player Chester Washington, trumpeter and arranger Leslie Drayton and trombonist Alex Thomas. With the singer Sherry Scott and the Chicago crew, it made a ten piece band. Maurice sang and played percussion, and he shopped demo tapes around town, some of them featuring Donny Hathaway. Warner Bros. Records signed the group and gave them the producer Joe Wissert.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The self titled debut album came out in March 1971 and reached number twenty four on the soul albums chart. Critics were not sure what to call it. One Detroit writer wondered aloud whether it was Afro gospel jazz blues rock. That year the band also played the score for Melvin Van Peebles's film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, a raw independent picture that became a surprise hit and helped launch the blaxploitation era. At the time the musicians were broke, living together in a single apartment with hardly any food. Van Peebles's secretary happened to be dating one of them, and that was how they got the job. Van Peebles projected scenes from the film while the band played along.[1] [2] [3] [4]

A second album, The Need of Love, followed in November 1971, and the band became a draw on college campuses. But the records did not sell, and the members grew restless. Wade Flemons left after disagreements with Maurice, and most of the others soon followed. By the end of 1971 only the two brothers were left. Verdine later said that walking away was never an option. He loved his brother, and he was going to stick it out. Maurice started again from scratch. In December 1971 he saw a young Los Angeles drummer named Ralph Johnson playing in a club, and invited him to audition for a brand new Earth, Wind and Fire.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The new line up came together in 1972, and a surprising amount of it came from one school in Denver, Colorado. Philip Bailey, a singer with a soaring falsetto, had gone to Denver's East High School and played in a local band called Friends and Love, which had opened shows for the early Earth, Wind and Fire. Maurice and Verdine went to his house one Sunday night, and Bailey told them he just wanted to be in the best band in the world. Bailey then recommended his friend Larry Dunn, a teenage keyboard player who had impressed him with a long Hammond organ solo at a Denver show. Ronnie Laws on saxophone and flute and Roland Bautista on guitar joined too.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Columbia and the climb

The first female singer in the new line up, Helena Davis, was soon replaced by Jessica Cleaves, who had sung with the Friends of Distinction on their hit Grazin' in the Grass. The managers Bob Cavallo and Joe Ruffalo took the band on, and Cavallo got them gigs opening for John Sebastian. At a show at New York's Rockefeller Center they caught the eye of Clive Davis, the president of Columbia Records. Davis was so impressed that he bought out their Warner Bros. contract. Their Columbia debut, Last Days and Time, came out in October 1972 with a painting by the artist Mati Klarwein on the cover, and it included versions of Bread's Make It with You and Pete Seeger's Where Have All the Flowers Gone.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Laws and Bautista soon moved on. To replace Laws, Philip Bailey suggested another East High School friend, the saxophonist Andrew Woolfolk. Woolfolk was in New York studying with the jazz great Joe Henderson and was about to start a career in banking, but music won. Two guitarists arrived as well. Johnny Graham came from the band New Birth, and Al McKay, a left handed player from New Orleans, had worked in the Ike and Tina Turner Revue and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band. Guitar Player magazine would later rank McKay among the fifty greatest rhythm guitarists. The fourth album, Head to the Sky, came out in May 1973 and became their first to go platinum. Jessica Cleaves left soon after.[1] [2] [3] [4]

For the next album the band went up into the Colorado Rockies, to Caribou Ranch, the studio owned by James William Guercio, the producer of the band Chicago. Open Our Eyes, released in March 1974, was produced by Maurice with Joe Wissert, and the Chicago arranger Charles Stepney, who had worked with Maurice in the Ramsey Lewis days, came in as associate producer. It went to number one on the soul albums chart and went platinum. Mighty Mighty, written by Maurice and Verdine, gave them a top five soul hit, and Kalimba Story put Maurice's favourite instrument right in the title. A Rolling Stone reviewer heard Africa, Latin rhythm, funk and smooth jazz all in one package.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

After Open Our Eyes, a third White brother joined. Fred White was a drum prodigy who had toured with Donny Hathaway before he finished high school, and now the band had two drummers driving the groove, with Ralph Johnson moving between the kit and percussion. On the sixth of April 1974 Earth, Wind and Fire played the California Jam festival to an audience of about two hundred thousand people, and ABC broadcast it across the United States. That same year Maurice produced his old bandleader Ramsey Lewis on the album Sun Goddess, with the band playing on it, and it went to number one on the soul albums chart. The pieces were in place. What they needed now was a smash.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Shining Star and a sudden loss

In 1975 the producer Sig Shore, who had made Super Fly, asked the band to record the music for a film called That's the Way of the World, and to appear in it. Harvey Keitel played a record producer, and Earth, Wind and Fire played a fictional band called the Group, with Maurice as its leader. When the band saw the finished movie, they were convinced it would flop. So they made a shrewd move and released the soundtrack before the film came out. Recorded at Caribou Ranch and produced by Maurice with Charles Stepney, whose lush, orchestral style now began to shape the band's sound, the album arrived in March 1975. It would long outlive the movie.[1] [2]

The idea for Shining Star came to Maurice on a night walk at Caribou Ranch, looking up at a sky full of stars. Written with Philip Bailey and Larry Dunn, it went to number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the soul singles chart, and That's the Way of the World topped the album chart as well. According to the band's history, that made Earth, Wind and Fire the first Black act to top both the Billboard album and singles charts. Shining Star won a Grammy, and the album went triple platinum. Bailey later summed up the moment with a grin. A hit, he said, don't hurt you, and Shining Star broke the door wide open.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Success paid for something Maurice had wanted for years, a horn section of his own. He called on old Chicago friends from his Chess days, the saxophonist Don Myrick and the trombonist Louis Satterfield, and added the trumpeter Michael Harris, with Rahmlee Michael Davis joining later. They became the Phenix Horns, famous for short, punchy lines that worked almost like percussion. After their first European tour the band made a double album of mostly live material with a few new studio songs. Gratitude came out in November 1975, spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, and included Sing a Song, written by Maurice and Al McKay, which topped the soul chart. A Chicago critic later called it a live masterpiece.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Maurice was building an empire. With Stepney he set up Kalimba Productions and signed the girl group the Emotions, the singer Deniece Williams, who had sung backing vocals for Stevie Wonder, and his old bandleader Ramsey Lewis. Stepney was co producing all of them, as well as the next Earth, Wind and Fire album. He had already suffered one heart attack, at the home of the music executive Clarence Avant. On the morning of the seventeenth of May 1976, Maurice spoke to him, eager to play him a new song the band had written in his honour, called Spirit. Later that day, in Chicago, Charles Stepney died of a heart attack. He was forty five.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Maurice finished the sessions largely on his own and named the album Spirit, in Stepney's memory. Released at the end of September 1976, it reached number two on both the pop and soul album charts and went double platinum. Getaway topped the soul chart and Saturday Nite became a hit in Britain. Maurice also completed Deniece Williams's debut album, This Is Niecy, and her single Free went to number one in the United Kingdom. The next year he and Al McKay wrote Best of My Love for the Emotions, and it spent five weeks at number one on the Hot 100. Kalimba was turning into a hit factory, and all of it ran through Maurice.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Pyramids, magic and September

By the late seventies an Earth, Wind and Fire concert was one of the hottest tickets around, and it looked like nothing else in pop. There were lasers, pyrotechnics, a flying pyramid and guitarists who seemed to levitate. The magician Doug Henning designed illusions for their tours, working with his assistant, a young David Copperfield, and George Faison choreographed the moves. The costume designers Bill Whitten and Louis Wells dressed the band in glittering outfits full of Egyptian and spiritual imagery. Maurice filled the band's world with ankhs, pyramids and the Eye of Horus. Some critics found it all a bit corny. NPR's critic remembered a friend saying fans were so swept up they would have done anything Philip Bailey asked.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In November 1977 came All 'n All, inspired by a month Maurice spent travelling through Argentina and Brazil. Its cover was painted by the Japanese illustrator Shusei Nagaoka, who went on to create several of the band's best known sleeves. The album went triple platinum and won a Grammy, and its instrumental Runnin' won another. Serpentine Fire, a song about the spiritual life force that some Eastern traditions place at the base of the spine, spent seven weeks at number one on the soul chart and was Billboard's R&B single of the year. Fantasy took three months to finish, until Maurice went to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind and found the spark he needed.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 1978 the band appeared in the film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a musical built around Beatles songs. Critics savaged the movie. But the scene where Earth, Wind and Fire played Got to Get You into My Life was one of the few things people liked. Their brassy remake went to number one on the soul chart and number nine on the Hot 100, went gold, and won a Grammy for its arrangement. The same year Maurice launched his own Columbia imprint, ARC Records, and together with the engineer George Massenburg he opened a studio in West Los Angeles called The Complex.[1] [2] [3] [4]

ARC's first release was a greatest hits album, and to help it sell, it needed new songs. One of them was September. Al McKay had come up with the chord progression, and Maurice invited a struggling songwriter named Allee Willis to help with the words. She walked into the studio just as they finished the intro, and prayed it was the song she would get to write. They worked on it for about a month. Willis hated Maurice's placeholder phrase, ba dee ya, and begged him to change it. When she finally demanded to know what it meant, his answer was, more or less, who cares. She said it taught her never to let a lyric get in the way of the groove.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

September came out in November 1978 and went to number one on the soul chart, number eight on the Hot 100 and number three in Britain. In January 1979 the band sang it at the Music for UNICEF concert at the United Nations, on a bill with ABBA, the Bee Gees and Donna Summer. Then came I Am, in June 1979. Boogie Wonderland, sung with the Emotions and written by Allee Willis and Jon Lind, sounded like pure glitter, but its lyric was about people using the dance floor to escape their pain. The ballad After the Love Has Gone, by David Foster, Jay Graydon and Bill Champlin, got stuck at number two behind My Sharona, but won the band another Grammy.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Synthesizers and a long pause

Faces, a double album released in October 1980, was partly recorded on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, with Toto's Steve Lukather adding guitar. It went gold rather than multi platinum, a step down from the albums before it, yet Maurice later called it his favourite Earth, Wind and Fire record, because the band were really in tune. It was also the end of an era. Soon after its release Al McKay, whose guitar parts sat at the heart of so many hits, was gone. Maurice brought back Roland Bautista, who had played on Last Days and Time, and began steering the sound toward the synthesizers and electronic textures of the new decade.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The first result was Raise!, released in the autumn of 1981. Its lead single, Let's Groove, written by Maurice with the keyboard player Wayne Vaughn, opens with a robotic vocoder voice and rides on a deep, heavy bass line. America was in the middle of a backlash against disco, yet the song spent eight weeks at number one on the soul chart and reached number three on the Hot 100. It turned out to be the band's last top ten pop hit. Its video, packed with early computer effects made on an analog system called Scanimate, was the first ever shown on BET's Video Soul. Another song from the album, Wanna Be with You, won the band a Grammy.[1] [2] [3]

Meanwhile the Phenix Horns were finding a second career. In 1981 they played on Phil Collins's first solo album, Face Value, and on records by Genesis, and they began touring with Collins. Earth, Wind and Fire kept going, with Powerlight in February 1983, named after the body's chakras, and Electric Universe that November. On Electric Universe the horns were gone, replaced by keyboards and synthesizers, and the album stalled at number forty on the Billboard 200. Larry Dunn had left in 1983, and Johnny Graham and Fred White drifted away too. In 1984 Maurice decided the band needed a break, and Earth, Wind and Fire went on hiatus.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The hiatus lasted until 1987, and nobody sat still. Maurice produced Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond and released a solo album with a hit version of Stand by Me. Philip Bailey made gospel records, one of which won a Grammy, and a pop album called Chinese Wall, produced by Phil Collins, whom he had met through the Phenix Horns. At the end of those sessions the two Phils jammed one night with the bassist Nathan East and wrote Easy Lover, recording it that night so they would not forget it. It went to number one in Britain and number two in America. Collins later said Bailey took flak for using a white producer.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Reunion, loss and a hidden illness

In 1987 Maurice called the band back together. Verdine, Philip Bailey, Ralph Johnson and Andrew Woolfolk returned, joined by the former Commodores guitarist Sheldon Reynolds, the drummer Sonny Emory and a new horn section. Touch the World came out that autumn and went gold. Its big single, System of Survival, came from a songwriter called Skylark, who handed Maurice a demo tape while he sat in his Cadillac in a studio parking lot. It went to number one on both the R&B and dance charts. A Rolling Stone reviewer noted that Bailey's falsetto still needed Maurice's low, sly counterpunch to bring it back down from the stratosphere.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The band worked hard to stay current. Heritage, released in 1990, featured the rapper MC Hammer, the young group the Boys, and a rare guest vocal from Sly Stone. It was their last album of new music for Columbia. In 1993 they returned to Warner Bros., the label they had left more than twenty years earlier, with Millennium, which featured Prince and their old bandmate Ronnie Laws. Its single Sunday Morning earned a Grammy nomination. That autumn Wade Flemons, one of the voices from the very beginning in Chicago, died of cancer in Battle Creek, Michigan, on the thirteenth of October 1993. He was fifty three.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Earlier that summer came a death that still troubles those who knew him. Don Myrick, the Phenix Horns saxophonist whose solos light up Reasons and After the Love Has Gone, had left Phil Collins's band around 1990, largely because of drug addiction, and he was being treated for leukaemia. On the thirtieth of July 1993, Santa Monica police arrived at his Los Angeles apartment with a search warrant in a narcotics investigation. Officer Gary Barbaro opened the door with a key from the building management, saw Myrick holding a butane lighter, took it for a weapon, and shot him once in the chest. Myrick died in hospital at fifty three. In 1995 the city settled his family's wrongful death suit for four hundred thousand dollars.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Maurice was carrying a secret of his own. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and he kept it hidden for years. In the mid nineties he stopped touring regularly, saying he needed rest from the road, and Philip Bailey became the band's leader on stage. Maurice kept executive control, produced records, appeared with the band now and then, and in 1996 launched a new label, Kalimba Records. The band received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in September 1995. Around the time of their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2000, Maurice spoke publicly about his illness, and stars including Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton and Smokey Robinson left messages of support on a website set up in his honour.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Hall of Fame and a new century

On the sixth of March 2000, Earth, Wind and Fire were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at New York's Waldorf Astoria, introduced by the rapper Lil' Kim. Maurice, Verdine, Philip Bailey and Ralph Johnson stood alongside former members Al McKay, Larry Dunn, Andrew Woolfolk, Fred White and Johnny Graham, and together they played Shining Star and That's the Way of the World. That June the band performed at a White House state dinner held by President Bill Clinton for King Mohammed the Sixth of Morocco. The king enjoyed it so much that he personally asked them to play his thirty seventh birthday celebration in Morocco that August.[1] [2]

The new century brought collaborations everywhere. The band played the closing ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, joined OutKast and Parliament Funkadelic in a tribute to funk at the 2004 Grammys, and teamed up with the Black Eyed Peas at a Super Bowl pregame show. Joint summer tours with the band Chicago in 2004 and 2005 produced a platinum concert DVD. In 2005 came Illumination, with guests including will.i.am, Kelly Rowland, Big Boi and Kenny G. It was their highest charting album since Touch the World and was nominated for the Grammy for best R&B album. It was also the last Earth, Wind and Fire album to feature Maurice White.[1] [2] [3]

Not everything worked. In 2006 Maurice wrote new songs with Allee Willis for Hot Feet, a Broadway musical built on the band's catalogue and based on the fairy tale The Red Shoes. Critics tore it apart. It opened in April and closed in July after ninety seven performances, losing its entire eight million dollar investment. Maurice had more luck with Interpretations, a 2007 tribute album he executive produced, with Chaka Khan, Kirk Franklin, Angie Stone and others covering the band's songs. The band played the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo in December 2007, and in February 2009 they became the first musical act to perform at the White House under President Barack Obama.[1] [2] [3]

Time was catching up with the wider family. Robert Brookins, a keyboard player and former musical director of the band, died of a heart attack in April 2009 at forty six. Roland Bautista died in February 2012 at sixty. Beloyd Taylor, who co wrote Getaway, died in January 2014, and Jessica Cleaves, the voice on Head to the Sky, died that May at sixty five, after complications from a stroke. Maurice's health kept him in the background. When the band released Now, Then and Forever in September 2013, their first album in eight years, it was the first made without his musical input, although he contributed a note to the liner.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Without Maurice

Now, Then and Forever reached number eleven on the Billboard 200, the band's best chart placing in three decades. In his liner note, Maurice hoped the music would keep tying the past to the future. In 2014 the band made its first Christmas album, Holiday, which turned September into December, now set on the twenty fifth night of December. On the fourth of February 2016, Maurice White died in his sleep at his Los Angeles home from the effects of Parkinson's disease. He was seventy four. Verdine announced it, calling him his brother, his hero and his best friend. Days later, at the Grammys, Stevie Wonder and Pentatonix sang That's the Way of the World in his honour.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Verdine, Philip Bailey and Ralph Johnson carried the band on, with Bailey's son, Philip Bailey Junior, in the line up. They toured with Chic in 2017 and opened a Las Vegas residency in 2018. In September 2019 the Los Angeles City Council declared the twenty first of September Earth, Wind and Fire Day. That December they received the Kennedy Center Honors, the first Black group to be so honoured. Johnson said each of them had been hand picked by Maurice for a mission of hope, love and respect. Bailey was candid too. Maurice never got high, he said, but not everyone in the band lived that clean, and he himself smoked a lot of weed.[1] [2]

More goodbyes followed. Allee Willis, co writer of September, died in December 2019. Andrew Woolfolk died in April 2022 at seventy one, after years of illness following a stroke. Ramsey Lewis, Maurice's old bandleader, died that September. On the first of January 2023 the band announced that Fred White had died at sixty seven, and Verdine wrote that his brother was now drumming with the angels. Sheldon Reynolds died that May. In March 2023 the company that owns the band's trademarks sued the promoters of a tribute act called Earth, Wind and Fire Legacy Reunion. In March 2024 a federal judge in Florida ruled for the real band, citing fans who felt deceived.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

The music keeps finding new listeners. In 2021 You Want My Love, featuring the singer Lucky Daye and co written by Babyface, took the band back into the top ten of Billboard's adult R&B airplay chart for the first time in twenty eight years. September has become a wedding staple and a football chant, first sung by Newcastle United fans in 2015 and taken up by England supporters at the 2018 World Cup. In December 2024 Verdine released Superman, his first song as lead singer, a tribute to Maurice. And as of 2026, Verdine White, Philip Bailey and Ralph Johnson are still on the road, sharing a summer tour with Lionel Richie.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

The people around Earth, Wind & Fire

Maurice White and Verdine White. Maurice sent for his teenage half brother in 1970, and Verdine arrived in Los Angeles that June to play bass. When the first line up collapsed a year later, Verdine refused to go, saying he loved his brother and would stick it out. He stayed through every era, co wrote hits like Mighty Mighty and That's the Way of the World, and in 2024 released Superman as a tribute to Maurice.[1] [2] [3]

Maurice White and Philip Bailey. Their voices defined the band, Maurice's warm tenor against Bailey's four octave falsetto. Maurice recruited Bailey from Denver in 1972, and Bailey later became the band's leader on stage when Maurice stopped touring. The partnership had friction. Bailey once said that Maurice was a great coach, but that the magic faded when Maurice came to think he was the whole team.[1] [2] [3]

Maurice White and Charles Stepney. They met when Stepney was arranging and producing for the Ramsey Lewis Trio, with Maurice on drums. Stepney brought an orchestral richness to Open Our Eyes, That's the Way of the World and Gratitude, and co founded Kalimba Productions with Maurice. He was a tough taskmaster in the studio. He died in May 1976, and the album Spirit was dedicated to him.[1] [2] [3]

Maurice White and Ramsey Lewis. Maurice joined the Ramsey Lewis Trio as drummer in 1966 and played on a string of its albums before leaving to form Earth, Wind and Fire. The roles later reversed. Maurice produced Lewis's 1974 album Sun Goddess, which topped the soul albums chart, and kept producing him into the nineties. Lewis died in Chicago in 2022, at eighty seven.[1] [2]

Earth, Wind and Fire and The Emotions. The Chicago sister group was stuck without a label when Maurice signed them through Kalimba Productions and produced them. They toured with the band and were nicknamed the girl Earth, Wind and Fire. Maurice and Al McKay wrote their number one Best of My Love, and in 1979 the two groups recorded Boogie Wonderland together. They appeared again on the band's 2003 album The Promise.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Maurice White and Allee Willis. Willis was a struggling Detroit born songwriter when Maurice called her in 1978 to co write the next album. Together they wrote September and later In the Stone, and she co wrote Boogie Wonderland. They argued for a month over his nonsense phrase ba dee ya. She went on to co write the Friends theme and the musical The Color Purple, and reunited with Maurice on Hot Feet.[1] [2] [3]

Philip Bailey and Phil Collins. The two met through the Phenix Horns during Collins's 1982 tour. Collins produced Bailey's 1984 album Chinese Wall in London, despite a rocky start when he nearly quit as producer. A late night jam with Nathan East produced Easy Lover, a transatlantic smash. Collins later said Bailey took flak for working with a white producer.[1] [2] [3]

The Phenix Horns and Phil Collins. From 1981 the Earth, Wind and Fire horn section played on Collins's solo records and toured with him, singing and playing percussion when there were no horn parts. Don Myrick's sax solo features on One More Night. The bond soured in 2000, when Collins sued Louis Satterfield and Rahmlee Davis over overpaid royalties and was awarded half of what he sought.[1] [2] [3]

Philip Bailey and Andrew Woolfolk and Larry Dunn. All three came out of the same Denver scene around East High School. Dunn and Bailey played in Friends and Love, which opened for the early Earth, Wind and Fire. Bailey then brought both friends into the band, Dunn in 1972 and Woolfolk in 1973. When Woolfolk died in 2022, Bailey remembered him as funny, competitive, quick witted and always styling.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Maurice White and Deniece Williams. A former backing singer for Stevie Wonder, Williams was one of the first artists on Kalimba Productions. Maurice finished producing her debut This Is Niecy after Stepney's death, and its single Free reached number one in Britain. She later said Maurice taught her the business of music. In 1980 she and Philip Bailey staged a gospel show at the Roxy in Los Angeles that pushed both toward Christian music.[1] [2] [3]

Verdine White and Shelly Clark. Verdine has been married for more than four decades to Shelly Clark, a former member of the Ikettes and the seventies group Honey Cone. They live in Los Angeles in a house built in 1919. Clark produced Superman, Verdine's 2024 tribute to Maurice and his first song as lead singer, with her Honey Cone bandmates singing backing vocals.[1] [2]

Rare facts about Earth, Wind & Fire

• Maurice White drummed on Fontella Bass's 1965 hit Rescue Me while working as a Chess Records session player. The bass line on that record was played by Louis Satterfield, Maurice's friend from the Jazzmen, who later became the trombonist in Earth, Wind and Fire's Phenix Horns.[1] [2]
• The first recording of Maurice playing kalimba was a 1969 Ramsey Lewis Trio tune called Uhuru. Maurice had found the African thumb piano in a Chicago drum shop. It appears on the trio's album Another Voyage, years before it became an Earth, Wind and Fire trademark.[1]
• As a boy in Memphis, Maurice White formed a band with his childhood friend Booker T. Jones. The two played together at Booker T. Washington High School. Another childhood friend was the future songwriter David Porter.[1]
• When Earth, Wind and Fire scored Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, the band were living in one apartment with hardly any food. They got the job because the filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles's secretary was dating one of the musicians. Van Peebles projected scenes while they played.[1]
• Saxophonist Andrew Woolfolk was about to start a career in banking when Philip Bailey invited him into the band. At the time Woolfolk was in New York studying saxophone with the jazz great Joe Henderson. He chose music, and stayed with the band for most of two decades.[1] [2]
• At fifteen, Larry Dunn was playing seven nights a week at a Denver club owned by a professional basketball player. The club belonged to Wayne Hightower of the Denver Rockets. Dunn and his bandmates, including Philip Bailey, were under age but allowed to play covers of James Brown and Santana.[1]
• Verdine White took double bass lessons from a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. On his father's and Maurice's advice he studied with Radi Velah, while learning electric bass on weekends from Louis Satterfield of Chess Records.[1]
• In 1978 Verdine White and Louis Satterfield wrote an instruction book together called Playing the Bass Guitar. Satterfield had been Verdine's first electric bass teacher back in Chicago. Verdine said he learned everything about the bass guitar from him.[1] [2]
• Verdine White has a twin sister named Geraldine. He is one of several White brothers. Fred played drums in the band, and Monte White worked as its tour manager from 1974 to 1984.[1]
• Producer Sandy Pearlman once called Earth, Wind and Fire the closest thing to a Black heavy metal band. The line was quoted in Rolling Stone's review of Shining Star, which described the song glowing with an incendiary charge.[1]
• Reasons, a favourite wedding song, is actually about a one night stand. The lyric describes a couple longing to love each other just for a night, followed by disillusion. Band members have said they were surprised to hear it played at weddings.[1]
• In 2018 September was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. The registry honours recordings judged culturally, historically or aesthetically important. Rolling Stone later placed September at number sixty five among the greatest songs of all time.[1] [2]
• The Houston Rockets used to play After the Love Has Gone after their losses. Other teams did the same, including the Chicago White Sox, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Charlotte Hornets.[1]
• After the Love Has Gone was first meant for Bill Champlin's own solo album. Champlin wrote the lyric to music by David Foster and Jay Graydon, then agreed to let Earth, Wind and Fire have it. Foster and Graydon later recorded their own version with their band Airplay.[1] [2]
• Maurice White and Wayne Vaughn got songwriting credits on Calvin Harris's 2017 hit Feels. The song interpolates Let's Groove, so its writers were added to the credits alongside Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry and Big Sean.[1]
• Easy Lover was the theme for the very first WrestleMania in 1985. The World Wrestling Federation used the Philip Bailey and Phil Collins duet for the event at Madison Square Garden in March 1985.[1]
• Boogie Wonderland's lyric was inspired by the 1977 film Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Allee Willis wrote it after seeing the drama about a woman who hides her pain in nightlife, so the song pairs a disco fantasy with the dreary reality it escapes.[1]
• Don Myrick's nickname Hippmo began as a childhood tease. As an overweight boy he was called Hippmo potamus. As he grew into a respected jazz and pop saxophonist, friends said the name came to mean he was mo' hip.[1]
• Guitarist Sheldon Reynolds was a contributing editor to Astronomy magazine. Reynolds, who joined in 1987, also hosted a radio talk show and was at one time married to Janie Hendrix, the adopted sister of Jimi Hendrix.[1]
• Percussionist Ralph Johnson holds black belts in two martial arts and has trained as a pilot. He has a first degree in Tang Soo Do and a third degree in Kung Fu San Soo, helps teach karate, and is a certified scuba diver.[1]
• Philip Bailey sang God Bless America at the first World Series game ever played in Denver. It was Game Three of the 2007 World Series at Coors Field in his home town. Bailey had long admitted that playing Denver used to make him nervous.[1] [2]
• Philip Bailey sings on Travis Scott's 2018 track Stop Trying to Be God. The song from Astroworld also features Stevie Wonder, Kid Cudi and James Blake.[1]
• Philip Bailey's 2019 jazz album Love Will Find a Way topped Billboard's jazz albums chart. NPR critic Ann Powers placed it at number five on her list of the ten best albums of 2019.[1]
• Verdine White is pictured on the Touch the World album but does not actually play on it. The 1987 comeback album relied heavily on programmed keyboards and drums from session players.[1]
• Chile's Viña del Mar festival uses the Earth, Wind and Fire song In the Stone as its broadcast theme. After the band opened the 2008 festival, the audience's response won them the Silver Seagull, the festival's top performance award.[1]
• A Sacramento park was renamed after former band keyboardist Robert Brookins in 2019. Brookins, who grew up in Del Paso Heights and won a Motown talent contest at eleven, died in 2009. An annual concert in Sacramento honours him.[1]
• Maurice White co wrote a song with Barry Manilow called Only in Chicago. It appeared on Manilow's 1980 album Barry. Maurice also wrote for the Japanese band Dreams Come True and for the Eddie Murphy film Coming to America.[1] [2]
• Allee Willis, co writer of September, also co wrote the theme from Friends. She joked that I'll Be There for You was the whitest song she ever wrote. She also co wrote the Broadway musical The Color Purple.[1]
• A 2016 cover of Serpentine Fire used drums by Phil Collins and guitar by Eric Clapton found in a basement. Nathan East's version with Bailey, Verdine and Ralph Johnson drew on tapes from an abandoned project, lost for twenty five years, discovered in Patti Austin's basement.[1]
• Elton John said Charles Stepney would have been his arranger of choice. Stepney also worked uncredited as a ghost producer for other acts, and was known in the studio for mocking players who needed tuning devices.[1]
• Earth, Wind and Fire contributed a song to the 1983 animated cult film Rock and Rule. Their track Dance, Dance, Dance appeared alongside Debbie Harry, Lou Reed and Cheap Trick on the soundtrack of the first feature film by the animation studio Nelvana.[1]
• Earth, Wind and Fire and Chicago recorded If You Leave Me Now together in 2005. The new version of Chicago's ballad appeared on Chicago's compilation Love Songs, during the two bands' joint summer tours.[1]
• An album of unreleased Maurice White recordings, Manifestation, came out in 2019. It gathered tracks he worked on with the songwriter and producer Preston Glass over nearly thirty years.[1]
• The Broadway musical Hot Feet, built on Earth, Wind and Fire songs, lost its entire eight million dollar investment. It opened in April 2006 and closed in July after ninety seven performances. No cast recording was ever made.[1] [2]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.