Fred White drummed professionally from the age of 15, and was the mainstay of Earth, Wind & Fire’s rhythm section for 10 years from 1974.Let’s Groove, Shining Star, Boogie Wonderland, September – these pop and disco hits by the US group Earth, Wind & Fire are among the most popular from the 1970s to 80s era. The funky, versatile drummer on them all was Fred White, who has died aged 67.Exuding joy, imagination and unity, EW&F, as their fans called them, made music that emphasised good times both on the dancefloor and off. A blend of soul, funk, jazz, Latin, Afro and pop, with smooth vocals, dynamic brass arrangements, dance-club friendly rhythms and catchy choruses, the records still sound fresh today and remain a staple at weddings, sports events and celebratory occasions.The band was the brainchild of Fred’s elder half-brother, Maurice White. Fred – who changed his surname to White, as did his bassist brother, Verdine Jr, to emphasise his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let’s Groove, Shining Star, Boogie Wonderland, September – these pop and disco hits by the US group Earth, Wind & Fire are among the most popular from the 1970s to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-516876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}