Earth, Wind & Hearth drummer Fred White died on Sunday at 67. He performed on hits like “September,” “Shining Star” and “Let’s Groove.”
White’s loss of life was confirmed in an Instagram put up by his brother, Verdine White, who performed bass within the band alongside their half-brother, singer Maurice White, who died in 2016.
“Our household is saddened in the present day with the lack of a tremendous and proficient member of the family,” Verdine White wrote. “He joins our brothers Maurice, Monte and Ronald in heaven, and is now drumming with the angels!”
Born in Chicago in 1955, Frederick Eugene Adams started drumming when he was 9 after his brother Monte made him a pair of drumsticks. “I used to be actually delighted by the truth that he had taken the time to make them, so I performed with them for a few yr and a half earlier than they bought all the way down to pencil dimension,” he later recalled to Trendy Drummer. “Actually, what occurred was, I used to take a seat down and watch myself follow and the motion of the sticks nearly hypnotized me. It grew to become one thing I needed to proceed doing.”
By the point he was a teen, Fred, who modified his final identify to match Maurice’s, was taking part in in native golf equipment. He additionally appeared on a number of basic albums within the early ’70s, together with Donny Hathaway’s Extension of a Man (1973) and Little Feat’s Feats Do not Fail Me Now (1974), earlier than becoming a member of his brothers in Earth, Wind & Hearth shortly after the discharge of their 1974 album, Open Our Eyes. The primary LP from the band to function his contributions arrived the next yr in 1975: That is the Manner of the World, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and included the No. 1 hit “Shining Star.”
Take heed to Earth, Wind & Hearth’s ‘Shining Star’
When Fred White first joined Earth, Wind & Hearth, he shared drumming duties with Ralph Johnson, a setup that was later dropped in favor of simply White on drums.
“Fred was the brick wall,” Maurice White wrote in his 2016 memoir, He supplied a rock-solid tempo and a rock-solid really feel, priceless qualities in a drummer. He was top-of-the-line issues going for us.”
In 1978, the band’s best-known tune, “September,” rose to the highest of the charts: No. 1 on the Billboard Sizzling Soul Songs rating, No. 8 on the fundamental chart and No. 3 within the U.Okay. The final Earth, Wind & Hearth album Fred White appeared on was 1983’s Electrical Universe. The band went on hiatus the next yr, and Fred did not return when it reconvened in 1987. He was included when the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2000.
“That household groove basis, it was constructed on Maurice, Verdine and Freddy,” Earth, Wind & Hearth singer Philip Bailey shared on Twitter following the information of White’s loss of life. “We by no means needed to say a lot … the groove was within the blood.”
Watch Earth, Wind & Hearth’s ‘September’ Video
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