Yesterday one of the musicians died who influenced so many of my colleagues: Maurice White. I think all the big band people I knew were dreaming of playing in Earth Wind & Fire (EWF) when we were in our late teens and early twenties because of this cd. Maurice White and his younger brother Verdine White founded the band already in 1969. Maurice White started out as a jaz drummer. In the first albums you still hear a big jazz and latin influence, also in the instrumental tunes. Maurice was not "only" a drummer, he wrote most of the tracks, producer, arranger, band leader and last but not least co-lead singer together with Philip Bailey. This cd from 1996 is what got my generation into: "EWF: Plugged in and live", also called "Live in Velfarre" or "Greatest Hits Live". Appearently they sold the material to a couple of rcord labels. By my knowledge it's all the same concert, with Morris Pleasure on keys and Scott Mayo on sax. Hard to find these days but people uploaded it to Youtube, so we can enjoy it here:
All their big hits who are so universal and made so many people dance throughout the last third of last century and still do. It's incredible. Put a EWF tune on any party and people will start dancing or keep dancing.
So the first time we played the music from Royalty For Real wasn't in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, but in Bengaluru and Mumbai, all the way in India in 2023!Here you'll see me play Au Privave, Classy Cats and Royalty For Real, together with Timothy Banchet (piano), Marius Beets (bass) and Sven Rozier (drums).Au Privave is a well-known blues by Charlie Parker which I often like to start with, almost like a soundcheck tune. Although most of the time a soundcheck is done I found out it's a good idea to play a tune everybody of the band knows very well so we all can get used to the sound of the stage, the presence of the audience and it also gives the sound engineer the chance to adjust microphones last minute. During the soundcheck, the sound of the room is significantly different because of the lack of audience. All that flesh and clothes work a little bit like a totally empty room versus a room with furniture and carpets, if you know what I mean :-)Acoustics are so interesting and full of surprises.. Anyways.. hope you like it! - Yesterday one of the musicians died who influenced so many of my colleagues: Maurice White. I think all the big band people I knew were dreaming of playing in Earth Wind & Fire (EWF) when we were in our late teens and early twenties because of this cd. Maurice White and his younger brother Verdine White founded the band already in 1969. Maurice White started out as a jaz drummer. In the first albums you still hear a big jazz and latin influence, also in the instrumental tunes. Maurice was not only a drummer, he wrote most of the tracks, producer, arranger, band leader and last but not least co-lead singer together with Philip Bailey. This cd from 1996 is what got my generation into: EWF: Plugged in and live, also called Live in Velfarre or Greatest Hits Live. Appearently they sold the material to a couple of rcord labels. By my knowledge it's all the same concert, with Morris Pleasure on keys and Scott Mayo on sax. Hard to find these days but people uploaded it to Youtube, so we can enjoy it here:All their big hits who are so universal and made so many people dance throughout the last third of last century and still do. It's incredible. Put a EWF tune on any party and people will start dancing or keep dancing.
