Earth, Wind & Fire drummer Fred White dead at 67 | 24CA News

Drummer Fred White, who performed alongside his brothers Maurice and Verdine White within the Grammy-winning ensemble Earth, Wind & Fire, has died. He was 67.

Verdine White, a vocalist, percussionist and bass participant for the band, posted Sunday on his Instagram account that his youthful brother Frederick Eugene “Freddie” White had died. He did not say how or the place his brother died.

Earth, Wind & Fire started in 1970 below the management of Maurice White, who created a band that might mix parts of jazz, funk, R&B, soul, dance, pop and rock, and celebrated African musicianship and spiritualism.

Driven by their horn part, the Phenix Horns, and a popularity for energetic and bombastic dwell performances, the group’s reputation grew after they moved to Columbia Records, which was then below the management of Clive Davis.

Fred White was already an achieved drummer, enjoying for Donny Hathaway, earlier than he joined Earth, Wind & Fire within the mid-Seventies. Paired alongside drummer and percussionist Ralph Johnson, the band’s rhythm part was tight and upbeat and set the stage for songs like Boogie Wonderland and September to grow to be prompt favorites.

Verdine White stated his brother Fred was a gifted youngster musician, “with gold records at the young age of 16 years old!” Fred White remained with the band till 1983.

‘We might at all times depend on him’

“But more than that at home and beyond he was the wonderful bro that was always entertaining and delightfully mischievous! And we could always count on him to make a seemingly bad situation more light hearted!” wrote White.

Some of the band’s largest hits are nonetheless extensively common, usually sampled and utilized in numerous films. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, performed the 2005 Super Bowl halftime present and has six Grammys.

The band’s Got to Get You Into My Life was on former president Barack Obama’s first Spotify playlist.

The band’s most profitable interval began with the 1975 album That’s The Way of The World and continued by means of the remainder of the last decade. Other hits included Serpentine Fire, Shining Star and a canopy of the Beatles’ Got to Get You Into My Life.