There was a brief moment smack dab in the middle of the 1970s – after Stevie and Sly had made funk a mainstream concern, before disco rose up to wipe out everything in its path – when soul music seemed to gather up all the magical musical forces that had been percolating throughout its DNA – all that funk, and all that jazz, the pop and the rock and the gospel – and blend it into one glorious moment of bliss.
If that moment had a soundtrack, it was called That’s the Way of the World. The blending was done by a nine-piece group of musicians from L.A. called Earth, Wind & Fire.
Actually, That’s the Way of the World (TTWOTW) started its life as a real soundtrack. Sig Shore, who had produced the groundbreaking blaxploitation film Super Fly in 1972, had a movie in mind about the music industry. He had a screenplay. He had a star – Harvey Keitel. The screenplay required a band. So did the soundtrack. Shore figured he’d killed two of those proverbial birds at the same time by hiring Earth, Wind & Fire to appear in the movie as the band as well as create the soundtrack.
Fifty years later, Earth Wind & Fire's That's the Way of the World is still awesome
It had worked with Super Fly and Curtis Mayfield. It had worked with Shaft and Isaac Hayes. In a case of events coming full circle, those two iconic early ‘70s’ films had taken their cue from Melvin Van Peebles’ 1971 movie Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, which had employed a band to play a funky soundtrack. Van Peebles had already written the music. The band he hired was none other than Earth, Wind & Fire.
So, Maurice White, de facto leader of EW&F, knew his way around the film soundtrack world. He knew enough to recognize that the movie That’s the Way of the World was never going to be big. So, he released the album on its own before the movie came out. As he predicted, the film came and went without so much as a ripple.
The album became a smash hit.
Drummer Maurice White founded what would become Earth Wind & Fire in the late 1960s and recruited his younger brother Verdine to play bass. Maurice was a top-shelf songwriter, and his rougher baritone was perfect for funkier numbers. In addition to his brother, he surrounded himself with a strong cast of musicians and vocalists and released a self-titled debut album in 1971.
EWF’s unique blend of jazzy big-band funk, supported by African rhythms and soaring harmonies, was on display from the beginning in songs like “Moment of Truth” and “C’mon Children.”
By their fifth album – 1974’s Open our Eyes – they had refined that funk hybrid into popular hits like “Mighty Mighty” and “Kalimba Story,” their first top ten singles on the R&B charts. By that point, White had made several lineup changes. The most important one had come in 1972 when he brought in 21-year-old Philip Bailey to serve as White’s co-lead singer. A pattern was soon established.
The White brothers' funk would be balanced by the silky smooth soul of Bailey’s glorious tenor that could soar to the heavens. On Open Our Eyes, EWF hits listeners with the ultra-cool funk of “Mighty Mighty” first and then swoops in with the beautiful romance of Bailey’s “Devotion.” Audiences ate it up.
That’s the Way of the World came next. It was released on March 3, 1975. Open Our Eyes had hit Number One on the R&B album chart. TTWOTW matched that feat but also climbed all the way to the top of the Pop Charts. It was official. EWF was a crossover sensation.
“Shining Star” blows the roof off from the needle drop. Its opening guitar/bass groove is as funky as anything Stevie Wonder or George Clinton was doing in the mid-‘70s. There are horn blasts. There are jazzy guitar fills. There are vocals from low bass to high tenor. All delivered with supreme confidence by a band that knew their game and knew their sound.
They follow the opener with the gorgeous title track, built on Bailey’s falsetto. The White brothers echo many of Bailey’s vocals, giving the sweet number a little bit of grit. That’s one of the secrets of EWF when they were at their best. Their funk had touches of soul. Their sweetest soul songs always had a tough backbone.
And they could be flat-out glorious fun as on “Happy Feelin’” and “Yearnin’ Learnin’.” Toward the end, White and fellow songwriter Larry Dunn slide in the remarkable instrumental “Africano,” which begins life as an immersive flute solo from Andrew Woolfolk before a drum break revs up the tempo and Woolfolk returns, now on the jazziest sax you would hear on a 1970s pop album.
Just before “Africano,” EWF slipped in a Philip Bailey song that just might be the most beautiful pop song of the decade. “Reasons” wasn’t even released as a single, but it has gone on to become identified with the band as much as any single they ever recorded. Bailey’s heavenly voice handles the lovely melody while the rest of the band provides shimmering support. There are enough little touches to hear new elements after more than a dozen listens. I know that from personal experience.
There’s a famous American movie from 1978 called Killer of Sheep. Its creation is something of legend. Crafted over a five-year period by UCLA film student Charles Burnett, he set out to make a movie that rejected the popular genre movies like Shaft and Superfly, which portrayed the modern African American experience as being centered entirely on urban crime and drug dealing. Killer of Sheep showed a normal black family living a normal life in mid-‘70’s Los Angeles.
There’s a moment in the film when the family’s young daughter is doing what plenty of children have done as long as there has been popular music. She is singing along to a tinny transistor radio, watching herself in the bathroom mirror. The song she is singing is “Reasons.” It is one of the most beautiful, heartfelt scenes in American cinema. As simple as it is deep, expressing all the longing and joy that a three-minute pop song can capture better than any other art form.
That was Earth Wind & Fire at their very best. They’d have plenty more success in the second half of the 1970s, but they were not going to top That’s the Way of the World. They didn’t have to. They had already summitted the mountain.