Guest of the pod, Elaine Leung, has seen Earth, Wind & Fire close to 25 times — and by her own admission, that still makes her a rookie in EWF fan circles. She joins Planet LP host Ted Asregadoo this week to dig into the band’s “fire years,” the run of albums from the mid-to-late ’70s that turned Maurice White’s group into one of the biggest acts in music.

The conversation covers a lot of ground: the jazz- and bossa nova-inflected 1971 debut most casual fans have never heard, the All ‘n All one-two punch of “Serpentine Fire” and “Fantasy,” and the humble kalimba — the thumb piano that shows up throughout the catalog and became so central to White’s sound he named his publishing company after it. Ted plays a couple of clips from Questlove’s new HBO documentary, Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That’s the Weight of the World), including Maurice White on the kalimba and Stevie Wonder on how “Shining Star” inspired “I Wish.”

Elaine and Ted also get into the harder parts of the story: White’s difficult childhood, the band’s brief pivot to a slicker, David Foster-produced pop sound on 1979’s I Am, and the tension that came with it — plus why the band’s lyrics seldom use gendered pronouns, and what that says about their whole philosophy of inclusivity and positivity. Elaine closes things out with a genuinely lovely story about her brother, “September,” and why this song means so much to her.

__

This episode is sponsored by Steve Fox’s Old School — classic soul, R&B, and hip hop from the golden era. Listen at stevefoxoldschool.com.