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- [00:00]
Chris Melanfi
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
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Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One Series. On our last episode we talked about the rise of funk in the first half of the 1970s, when the 60s innovations of James Brown, Sly Stone, Isaac Hayes and Parliament Funkadelic were taken up by a rising generation of syncopated bands and soulful singers. These acts, from War to Cool in the Gang to the Ohio Players, saw their funky recordings rise to not just on the singles charts but also the album chart as listeners across the musical spectrum enjoyed the tight rhythms and the sprawling jams. We are now in the mid-70s when an eclectic combo called Earth, Wind and Fire is about to take over the charts and usher funk into the disco era. A fun footnote about Earth, Wind and Fire they recorded a blaxploitation movie soundtrack even before Isaac Hayes or Curtis Mayfield. They were the uncredited backing band to Melvin Van peebles on the 1971 soundtrack to the director's seminal film Sweet Sweetback's badass song Ground Zero for Blaxploitation. Frankly, you can barely tell. Earth, Wind and Fire are playing on that soundtrack, which AllMusic calls serviceable period funk soul. About the only telltale sign is when EWF leader Maurice White plays the kalimba, the African style thumb piano. White was probably the most famous kalimba player of all time. Maurice White started as a session musician, playing drums on countless recordings for Chess records, but he had greater ambitions, founding his own band in Chicago in 1969. White named them Earth, Wind and Fire, after his astrological chart, which had no water signs. The group signed to Warner Brothers Records and two EWF albums came and went along with that Sweetback soundtrack to only modest success. White disbanded the group, retaining only the Earth, Wind and Fire name, and his brother, bassist Verdine White, signed to a new deal with Columbia Records in 1973, the year funk really began to blow up on the charts, EWF finally caught a wave. Head to the sky, earth, Wind and Fire's 1973 LP generated two R B top 40 hits, cracked the top 30 on the pop album chart and went gold even among their funky peers. In 73, EWF had a more expansive, eclectic sound, played by a jazzy nine piece band and fronted by the falsetto vocals of Philip Bailey and Maurice and Verdine White. It was an ethereal, airy sound, but the next year on a much bigger single, EWF brought the uncut funk. Mighty mighty, a number four R&B number 29 pop hit distilled the Earth, Wind and Fire sound for Radio Domination and set a template for the band melodic funk with brassy, intricate playing and stacked vocals. EWF had a good 1974. Their Open Our Eyes LP cracked the top 20 on the pop album chart and spun off the three sizable hits. But 1975 was even better. Much better. Shining Star was the lead single of that's the Way of the World, Earth, Wind and Fire's sixth studio album, and by the way, the soundtrack to a Harvey Keitel movie that's largely forgotten today. EWF didn't need a boost from that flop film because World the album was a world beating blockbuster. Their most acclaimed and best selling LP, it topped the album chart in mid May 1975 and one week later Shining Star topped the Hot 100. Percolating and danceable with mystically minded lyrics about being born a man child of the sun, Shining Star may be the quintessential EWF funk song. It has the heavy bottom and the pillowy top. Elsewhere on that's the Way of the World, EWF further showcased their breadth. The lilting title track was a number 12 pop number 5 R&B. The album also kicked off a stunning chart run for Earth, Wind and Fire. From 1975 through 79, EWF scored a top five platinum album every year. These included Gratitude, another number one LP in early 76 that generated the ebullient top five hit Sing a Song. And the late 76 album Spirit, which reached number two and spun off the hard charging number one R&B number 12 pop hit Getaway.
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Get Away.
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Again, these were hit albums, not just hit songs with gatefold sleeves, elaborate Afrocentric imagery and slick photos of the band assembled in artful arrangements. EWF albums, even more than the sexy covers from the Ohio Players, upped the ante for RB and funk iconography. They looked more like progressive or hard rock albums, and they sat comfortably in the collections of 70s LP buyers next to the likes of Led Zeppelin. And yes. The elaborate imagery also matched EWF's live show, which Maurice White stacked with lavish costumes, special effects and pyrotechnics, sometimes even stunts designed by magician Doug Henning. And the band was augmented on stage by their regular brass combo, the Phoenix Horns, who would later back Phil Collins on his brassy solo album. Through all of this elaborate production and instrumentation, the core of Earth Wind and Fire's music was still funk, best exemplified by Serpentine fire, a number one R&B number 13 pop hit in 1977 and the lead single to yet another platinum album. All in all, If Earth, Wind and Fire represented funk's heightened superego, you might say Parliament Funkadelic was the ID Rolling Stones Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll positions p funk as EWF's quote, ideological rivals. Down and dirty, but equally eclectic. Indeed, George Clinton's dual axis of bands never scored the major pop crossover EWF enjoyed. Neither Parliament nor Funkadelic ever landed a top 10 hit on the Hot 100. But away from the spotlight of pop listeners, Clinton had been mounting his own elaborate, crazy funk revolution with equally spacey LP covers. For deep 70s funk fans, P. Funk were the prototype. Parliament's up for the Downstroke became The P Funk Collective's first R B top 10 hit in 1974. Its chanting rhythmic chorus, get up for the downstroke, everybody get up. Was quintessential George Clinton gibberish with a sense of purpose from a man who once titled an album free your mind and your ass will follow. Each P Funk album was high concept, though some of George's concepts were more legible than others. Titles included Cosmic Slop and Funkin Telecki versus the placebo syndrome. One of the more accessible concepts on 1975's Chocolate City imagined a nationwide takeover of the levers of government by black America.
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Richard Pryor, Minister of Education, Stevie Wonder, Secretary of fine arts and Ms. Aretha.
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Maurice White
Franklin, the first lady.
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Chris Melanfi
Are you out there, Cece? George Clinton's not so secret weapon was the towering bassist Bootsy Collins, a veteran of of James Brown's JB's at their early 70s peak.
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I got something that makes me want to shout I got that thing Tell me what it's all about I got soul.
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Bootsy permanently joined the P Funk Collective in 1972. Standing 6 foot 2, clad in outrageous spangled outfits and glasses with stars on the lenses, popping his bass and singing pinched high harmony vocals, Bootsy became both a musical and a visual icon of Clinton's band. And he was instrumental to the success of Parliament's most successful album.
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Yeah, make my funk of people.
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I wants to get funked up. Mothership Connection, released at the very end of 1975, became the first Platinum P funk album in 1976, and their biggest crossover moment. Bootsy Collins was among the highlights on the second single, give up the funk, Tear the roof off the sucker. His percolating bass line is Considered definitive, The COVID of Mothership Connection featured George Clinton, a huge Star Trek fan, emerging from a flying saucer, legs first in platform moon boots. This imagery and the album's strong sales paid off on P Funk's now legendary Mothership tour of 1976, which featured a full scale spaceship and a massive band of expert funk players.
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Getting down.
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And if possible, P Funk's stage show was even more extravagant than Earth, Wind and Fires, and it attracted concert goers across the spectrum who might otherwise not have gone to a funk show. The Mothership Connection album went gold, then platinum. Within a year, George Clinton had become Prime Minister of Funk by following his freaky muse without really trying to cross over. Which brings up an interesting point. How far would any of these acts need to go to attract a mainstream audience? Earth, Wind and Fire were finding a huge audience with their sleek and heterogeneous funk, but they were eclectic from the start. And through 1976, acts as unabashedly funky as War and the Ohio Players were scoring massive pop hits without diluting their sound. How much further would they go? The answer to this question became more pressing in the late 70s after funk started grafting itself and then competing with other popular forms. For example, Wild Cherry, a band from Steubenville, Ohio, though you probably wouldn't call them Ohio Players, are often categorized as a flag funk rock band, a label that has as much to do with their race as their music. Essentially, their 1976 number one hit, Play that funky music, which some classify as disco, was really straight up funk, even with the inclusion of the self consciously satirical lyrics.
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White boy music, White boy play that music Right.
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Similarly, Aerosmith's Walk this Way, the original version, a top 10 hit in 1977, had a highly syncopated beat and riff that guitarist Joe Perry patterned after the Meters a decade before it was remade by rapper's Run dmc. Walk this Way was already a white rock approximation of funk, So that was rock appropriating funk's moves. And then of course, there was disco, which in many cases was really just funk by another name. On their comeback reinvention single jive talking number one in 1975, the Bee Gees were openly emulating the bass sound of Stevie Wonder and Sly Stone. If not for their breathy vocals and the keening synths, Jive Talkin would probably be classed as a funk record. And by the way, that was true of disco hits by black performers too, such as rolls Royce, the LA group behind Carwash, another Hot 100 number one in early 1977. Like Jive Talkin, Car Wash was built out of a popping funk bassline. The song even came from the soundtrack of a latter day blaxploitation film. So for full on funk acts making the transition from the early 70s to the late 70s, the dilemma concerned whether to adapt, especially as disco took over the charts and by how much. One of the most interesting before and after cases was a group from Tuskegee, Alabama. You might say the Commodores, a sextet of multiple songwriters and instrumentalists, had a split personality from the start. Their debut single, an instrumental called Machine Gun, was a synth funk breakdown written by keyboardist Milan Williams. It reached number seven on the R&B chart and number 22 on the Hot 100 in 1974. The following year, slippery When Wet, an even funkier jam written by Commodore's guitarist Thomas McLary, went to number one R B and cracked the pop top 20. The lead singer on Slippery When Wet was also a songwriter. You've probably heard of him, Lionel Richie. And Lionel tended toward the softer side. Sweet. When the Commodores finally broke into the pop top five in 1976, they did it with Sweet Love, a Richie penned ballad with both R and B and pop in its bones. Lionel excelled at this kind of soft composition. Later in 77, Ritchie took the Commodores back into the top five and back to number one R&B with the wistful mid tempo saloon ballad Easy.
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I'm easy like Sunday Morning.
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And yet through all of this, the Commodores didn't abandon funk. Their very next hit to this day, one of their most popular, sung by drummer Walter Orange, was the funk ode to Callipygian women, Brick House. And it was a top five on both the pop and R and B charts. House.
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She'S mighty mighty Just letting it.
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All hang out she's afraid so in other words, the Commodores could still give up the funk, and they didn't have to give up on funk. But they couldn't help but notice that Brick House accepted the funky songs tended to fall short at top 40 radio, such as their number 39 hit, Fancy Dancer. Or the number 24, too hot to Trot.
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Well, you're too hot to chop now, baby well, you're too hot to stop, baby well, y' all do have to.
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So at a time when songs like you Light up My life and How Deep is your Love were commanding the Hot 100, the Commodores chose to lean into their secret sentimental weapon, Lionel Richie and his piano. Once, twice.
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Three times later.
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Three times a lady finally took the Commodores to number one on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1978. A year later, the even gentler, more lacrimose still did the trick again.
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So many dreams that flew away so many words.
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Even more than on Sweet Love or Easy in these songs, the syncopation the funk was gone. The Commodores scored just a couple more up tempo hits with Lionel Richie in the band before he left for a multi Platinum 80s solo career. By then they had fully converted to a post disco easy listening group. Not really a funk group. Still props cuz. Lady you Bring Me up is a jam. So the Commodore's shift away from hard funk was gradual and not entirely necessary. They had hits throughout the 70s for cool and the Gang. However, the choice was motivated by a career imperative. The spirit. By the mid-70s, cool and the Gang could still be relied upon to score big R b hits like 1975's Spirit of the Boogie. Despite the boogie in its title, this was still their original brand of hard funk, a la jungle boogie. But by 1976, with disco on the rise, bandleader Robert Cool Bell felt cool and the gang needed to get in front of the trend. So they recorded Open Sesame, an exotic, horn inflected disco funk track that had the good fortune to appear on the soundtrack to 1977's Saturday Night Fever. Unfortunately, this didn't help cool and the gang's sales much. The Open Sesame LP only reached number 110 on the album chart, so Cool and Gang leaned even harder into disco. 1978's Everybody's Dancin piled strings on top of the group's funk bass and horns. It was an awkward hybrid. The Everybody's Dancing single missed the top 40 on the R B chart and missed the Hot 100 entirely. The album bubbled under the album chart at number 207. Disco had seemingly made Cool and the Gang obsolete. They would need a total overhaul. Band leader Bell brought in a new producer, new instrumentalists, and for the first time, a permanent lead singer, the smooth James J.T. taylor. The group was finally going to just skip over disco and aim for slick balladry and gently funky pop. This turned out to be a very wise move. Cool and the Gang anticipated the sound of 80s pop and B. Ladies. Night, the title track of their late 1979 LP, returned Cool and the Gang to the top 10 on the Hot 100 and to number one on the R and B chart. The group hadn't entirely abandoned funk basslines or their syncopated horns. They just smoothed everything out while removing any obvious disco Tropes. One year later, an even more ebullient party jam did even better for Cool and the Gang. Celebration, which is surely playing somewhere in America as I speak, wherever more than 10 people are gathered, reached number one on the Hot 100 in the winter of 1981. The song was extremely danceable, but again, it did not have obvious disco overtones, making it an easier sell on the radio of 1980 and 81. It had funk guitar and deep synth bass, but it sounded like the 80s, not the 70s. Cool and the Gang would go on to mine this sound for the rest of the decade, Scoring seven more top 10 hits. 10 in total out of 13 top 40 hits in the 80s alone. Though they had only been medium level hitmakers in the 70s. Improbably in the 80s, cool and the Gang became kings of pop and B crossover. And they didn't have to give up funk entirely. This choice, to funk or not to funk, to cross over or go with what you know, was handled differently by every 70s veteran act. As the 80s approached the Ohio players, for example, their staggering mid-70s success turned out to be fleeting. They tried going jazzier on an album called Mr. Mean, then tried their hand at Disco Funk fear fusion in 1979 to only modest results. War, for their part, gave Latin Flavored Disco a try. 1977's Galaxy squeaked into the pop top 40 at number 39 and and was their last R&B top 10 hit. However, War did continue to record steadily into the 80s and 90s. Curtis Mayfield shifted away from funk toward a mix of stately R and B balladry and a kind of yacht Soul. 1981's she Don't Let Nobody But Me was his last R B top 20 hit. In 1990. Mayfield was paralyzed when a lighting ridge fell on him at a concert. That decade he was inducted twice into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame, once with the Impressions and a second time on his own. Just months after that solo induction in 1999, Curtis Mayfield died at age 57. And what about the opposing archetypes of mid-70s Funko? Earth, wind and Fire and George Clinton's Parliament Funkadelic Universe? True to form, they went in opposite directions, but both approaches worked. George Clinton scored his biggest hits in the late 70s at the height of disco. Even if other acts were abandoning uncut funk, he was going to continue to set the agenda. And 1978 was his most imperial year. In March of 78, Parliament topped the R B chart for the first time and reached an impressive number 16 on the Hot 100 with flashlight. Three weeks later, Clinton effectively replaced himself at number one R B when a track he'd produced for bassist Bootsy Collins called Bootzilla. You got. Succeeded Flashlight on top. Then, just six months after. We're on the Moon, Funkadelic scored its biggest ever single and album, both titled One Nation Under a Groove. The LP went top 20 and platinum. The single was a top 30 pop hit and one R&B for six weeks. Clearly, P Funk fans preferred George Clinton deeply funky and deeply weird. Over the next four years, Clinton would continue to top the R and B chart with such quirky jams as Parliament's Aqua Boogie. Funkadelics, not just knee deep. And in the early 80s, under his own name, George Clinton would hit the top with his digital funk hip hop jam Atomic Dog. Clinton's loopy catchphrases from these hits like Psycho Alpha Disco Beta or Bow wow wow, Yippee yo Yippee yay. Became permanent parts of hip hop lingo. No other funk veteran was given greater permission to let his freak flag fly. And that fearlessly freaky style arguably made Clinton the greatest influence not only on hip hop, but on the next generation of 80s funk, from Rick James. To the gap band. 2 cameo. And what About Earth, Wind and Fire. Maurice White's killer instinct, his unerring ear for crossover hits kept EWF in the game right through the end of the decade and beyond. September, a one off single attached to a late 1978 greatest hits album is now Earth, Wind and Fire's most played perennial streamed more than 1.1 billion times on Spotify, co written by Maurice White, his guitarist Al McKay and Journey Woman songwriter Ali Willis, who by the way, would later pen hits for the Pet Shop Boys and the Rembrandts. No kidding. September blended funk and disco into a joyous celebration. By the way, nobody really knows what Badia means, and Maurice White claimed that he picked the 21st night of September entirely at random. Anyway, EWF followed the disco adjacent September with Boogie Wonderland, A full dive into disco that reached number two, R&B, number six pop. And then, As we discussed in our yacht rock episode of Hit Parade, EWF scored with the classic yacht soul ballad after the Love Has Gone. It hit number two on both charts, just as the album I AM became EWF's fifth consecutive Platinum Studio album. It was the band's versatility that sold all those LPs and generated all those hits. Songs like Boogie Wonderland and After the Love Has Gone may not have been funk per se, but they didn't take EWF that far away from the music's roots. The syncopation, the bass groove, the sophisticated arrangements and the falsetto vocals like Curtis Mayfield from nearly a decade before on.
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Superfly and I didn't have to be here, you didn't have to love for me while I was just.
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Anyway, as ever, Earth, Wind and Fire didn't stray from from straight up funk for long. Amazingly, EWF scored arguably their biggest chart hit ever in 1981 with the synth funk banger let's Groove, with eight weeks at number one on the soul singles chart, their longest R B reign ever, and five weeks at number three on the Hot 100. Outlasting the endurance of their 1975 number one shining star, let's Groove summarized everything EWF had done in the prior decade. All right. Sleek, brassy, catchy, fluttery, smooth, romantic, and most of all, funky, let's Groove could not have been more aptly titled. It was EWF's last blockbuster, But not their last hit. After a mid-80s hiatus, the group kept scoring on the R B chart through the late 80s and early 90s, including their final number one R B hit, 1987's System of Survival. Separately, on his own, vocalist Philip Bailey scored a massive 80s hit, teaming up with Earth, Wind and Fire fan Phil Collins. Their duet 1985's Easy Lover hit number two.
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Heart, but you won't feel it. She's like no other.
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Earth, Wind and Fire were inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame in 2000. That same year, it was announced that Maurice White was contending with Parkinson's disease. He nonetheless made the ceremony and spoke briefly.
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Maurice White
Well, the first thing I can say is that I'm speechless getting together. But it's been a long, hard road. But it's been a beautiful road having the talented musicians along with us to take the ride. It's been very good. And we couldn't have went anyplace without the fans, the loyal fans. We thank you very, very.
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Chris Melanfi
White lived another decade and a half continuing to mind the group's business, even as he could no longer join them on stage. Maurice White died in February 2016 at the age of 74. Maybe among the 70s class of funk acts, Earth, Wind and Fire were not as influential as George Clinton and the P Funk All Stars, or certainly going back to the 60s, as formative as James Brown or even Curtis Mayfield. But you could say that Maurice White's brainchild, the band he formed half a century ago that sold about 90 million records was the most successful product of funk, proof of the music's adaptability and reach. EWF's music was all encompassing, versatile and joyous. And by the way, fronted by Philip Bailey and Verdine White, Earth, Wind and Fire continues to tour to this day. In fact, just a month ago in September 2022, they were on stage performing. Well, of course, September. There are no onstage pyrotechnics anymore at an EWF show, no magic tricks. The pyramid images and laser lights are now just projected onto a screen, and the band are no longer wearing wide collars, sequins and moon boots. But if you close your eyes, the groove is unmistakable, the funk undeniable. And as the song says, you'll dance in the night and remember how the stars stole the night away. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis. Kevin also produced the latest episode of our monthly Hit Parade the Bridge shows, which are available exclusively to Slate plus members. In our latest Bridge episode, I talked to Chicago radio host and author Ayanna Contreras, who talks about how her hometown contributed to the history of funk and soul. To sign up for Slate plus and hear not only the Bridge but all our shows the day they drop, visit slate.com hitparadeplus Alicia Montgomery is is the executive producer and Derek John the supervising narrative Producer of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanfy.