Earth, Wind & Fire

90
Earth, Wind & Fire

Earth, Wind & Fire

Everyone knows this legendary band from their timeless disco hits like “September,” but what if I were to tell you this band had been around since the dawn of the ‘70’s & didn’t receive their number one hit until 1975- and it wasn’t even “September”- it was “Shining Star,” and quiet impossibly, that was their only number one hit. So for those keeping track: It wasn’t until Earth, Wind & Fire’s fourth album, second record label, and umpteenth personnel change that Maurice White and company began their metamorphosis into the quintessential African-American hit band of the ‘70s. They did it by following the advice of the album’s erstwhile titled track, “KeepYour Head to the Sky.” For the next decade, the group’s insistent optimism and spirituality helped E.W.&F. rival the accomplishments of its greatest detractor, George Clinton, leader of Parliament-Funkadelic empire. EWF’s black-music synthesis spanned pop, soul, jazz, funk, gospel, African music, and rock. But no matter the style, nearly every hit got the same treatment: padded and polished with smooth vocal harmonies and horn charts and elevated with exuberantly positive lyrics and Philip Bailey’s stratospheric lead vocals. Avoiding the twisted pleased of deep funk and gritty soul, this enhanced high was a natural correlative to disco, thus winning over a huge multiracial audience. But it also may explain why, after the triumph of gritty hip-hop in the 1980’s and ‘90s, even the group’s greatest collection- the 1978 Best Of- has proven less influential and may be more dated than Clinton’s funked-up P-Funk sound. A career capping three-CD box set, The Eternal Dance, offers a lovingly annotated and sequenced collection of greatest hits and smoothly integrated obscurities that sill don’t quiet add up to the merit of its extravagant length. If the middle disc rivals the high of the Best Of volume, the group’s confused early jams and synth-logged ‘80s fare drag the other two. Surprisingly, Earth, Wind & Fire came back together in 1997 with a fatter, funkier bottom on In The Name of Love, convincingly updating their trademark sound throughout the album’s first half, though the second slips away on generic light jams. Unfortunately, generic light jams provide more of the highlights on the group’s fourth-decade of offerings. You can’t go wrong with any of their greatest hits collections, specifically The Essential. And if you wanna’ run deeper, anything from ’75 – ’85 is surely gonna’ scratch that itch for 'ya. There’s no need for things to get dire- when you have…

Earth Wind & Fire