One of the most widely sampled popular music acts of all time, Earth, Wind & Fire have been a munificent treasure trove for DJs and producers with the patience to mine the funk and disco-fusion animal’s dense repository. They have quietly influenced everyone from Basement Jaxx to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, but their success didn’t happen overnight. Forty years since their classic lineup assembled, their sold-out performance at the Durham Performing Arts Center on the 19th night of September was, however, only a testament that it was only a matter of time.
Technically active since 1969, the band’s 40th anniversary tour observed the year they rereleased their self-titled debut recording, though selections from that album or their other 1971 release The Need For Love were conspicuously from this tour’s set list. It was, however, a 90-minute retrospective of the band’s most prominent work, from the head-rattling funk of “Serpentine Fire” to the boudoir jams like “Reasons” that vocalist Phillip Bailey wryly noted likely led to the procreation of more than a few people in the room.
While Bailey was adept at getting fans horizontal, bassist Verdine White easily sent them vertical. Earth, Wind & Fire were widely credited with helping bring black pop into the mainstream, imbuing groovecentric rhythm and blues with Beatlesesque musicality, but like their edgier comrades-in-funk Parliament Funkadelic, EWF were also about the personalities. From the moment the full 13-piece band had rumbled onto stage for the “Boogie Wonderland,” White stood out amidst the visual and aural calamity. The tallest man on stage, the band’s co-founder and rhythmic engine bobbled around the stage in garish tasseled pants, quivering like a tuning fork. While everyone in the band was comparatively reserved in their roles, he was the band’s spark plug on stage and the focal point for the audience’s enthusiasm, dropping meanass basslines and gnashing his teeth in ferocity with his long locks flowing.
Elsewhere, they wielded a three-piece horn section, sizzling wah-wah guitar, a revolving cast of drummers and percussionists, and the illustrious Bailey on lead vocals, the man who’s ungodly four-octave range is still as clear and vibrant as it was on his Phil Collins duet “Easy Lover.” He flexed his falsetto muscle on “Fantasy” as the band dropped out completely, giving him room to push his tessitura into the exosphere. However incredible the pinnacle of his range is, his ability to seamlessly transition back into the smooth tenor of Maurice White was most remarkable.
The trademark extravagance of their past stage shows (once designed by magician Doug Henning) has been recanted in favor of a far more subdued production; no more disappearing acts, pyrotechnics or levitation. Only tasteful color washes and undulating LED drum stands for the band’s more mature audience, though at least four generations and all ethnicities were represented — a testament to the band’s considerable cross-cultural appeal.
The visual spectacle was instead provided by the band. White high-stepped around stage while plucking his bass to “Shining Star,” suggesting Les Claypool’s own exaggerated duck walk might be a bit of an anachronism. On the other side, B. David Whitworth, Bailey, drummer-turnedsinger Ralph Johnson and Phillip Bailey, Jr. met him move for move, assembling in line-dance formation and synchronized boy-band scrums.
Their set delved into the deepest recesses of the band’s catalog, save for the pre-Bailey years, going through equal stretches of unadulterated funkiness and peanutbutter-smooth R&B. The latter was at times tedious, but the volcanic arrival of “September” and “Let’s Groove” made it worth every second.
