Disco de Earth, Wind & Fire: “Head to the Sky”

Some may prefer EWF's more polished, radio-friendly recordings from the mid-to-late 70's, but 1973's "Head To The Sky" is one of their greatest efforts. This early in the game EWF were alerady composing angelic ballads like "World's A Masquerade", displaying their infallible skill for harmony arrangements. The opening track, "Evil" is a mysterious piece, incorporating funk guitars, latin rhythms, ghostly back-up vocals and Maurice White's ever-present kalimba, which is used here to spooky effect. "Build Your Nest" is a favorable funk jam, the ballad "Keep Your Head To The Sky" showcases Phillip Bailey's and Jessica Cleaves' wonderful falsetto voices. The last two tracks, "Clover" and "Zanzibar" incoporate funk, rock, african & latin rhythms into spacious instrumental jams that would become absent from their later records and appear only onstage.

The album also features wonderful horn arrangements, all the strengths you hear on this album will be better developed on later efforts. (Also recommended, 1972's "Last Days & Time".)

Ahh, to witness the beginning of something special and wondrous. One of the true innovators. This album mixes the complex harmonies, exotic rhythms and elements from funk, jazz, latin, gospel and pop into something ahead of it's time. "Zanzibar" is worth the price of this CD alone. Open and exotic, improvisational and rhythmic.

"Zanzibar", "Evil", "Head to the Sky" and "Masquerade" shows a stark beauty that is seldom heard. The beginning of the wondrous journey begins here.

"Head To The Sky" finally saw the group reach its first flowering of maturity; like its predecessor "Last Days And Time" it is a strong and highly spiritual collection of Afro-funk rockers, ballads and lengthy funk-fusion numbers, but improves on all three counts, and also comes together better as a unified statement. Unusually, it is the only EWF album not to feature the group's trademark horn arragements, but this does not detract from the proceedings one bit; indeed, it allows the group a chance to stretch out in other directions. "Evil" starts the album strong with a strong, sure groove that is abetted by the kalimba and some stellar harmony vocals; these vocals reach an absolute peak of ecstasy on the title track, which is the most graceful and thought-provoking ballad in the group's repertoire (check out the insanely high pitched final vocal line!). Sitars, electric pianos, fuzzed guitars and kalimbas are mixed in a sound that is both soulful and experimental; the band make it all come together with disarming ease. The next three tracks follow from there, with the closing instrumental epic "Zanzibar" reminding one of a more relaxed, sophisticated version of "Power" from the previous album--the organ solo in particular is a unique highlight. Although the filler still pops up (this time it's another soppy ballad, "Masquerade", although even this one has its guilty charms) and the overall mood can get a bit *too* relaxed, "Head To The Sky" was a perfect setup for the commercial breakthrough which was to come with the next album.

Earlier releases on Warner Bros. were missed by most people and the release, "Last Days and Times" was peeked at by a few folks, but with this release, Earth, Wind and Fire begins their reign as THE R&B band of the 70's and will go on to inspire a generation of innovative musicians.

Head to the Sky mixes african and cuban poly-rhythmns with jazz and funk in ways that will probably never be duplicated. On "Evil" Maurice White does solo on his Kalimba (african finger piano) that riveting. The title cut features Philip Bailey on lead vocals that are just too good for words. (He shares the ending vocals with Jessica Cleaves. This release is her last appearance w/EWF) "Build Your Nest" features that signature BASS from Verdine White that is funky, funky, funky! "World's A Masquerade" a gospel-inspired cut, showcases the skills of Larry Dunn on keyboards with Bailey and Maurice sharing lead vocals. Clover continues the jam session, showcasing the backbone of the group, Al Mckay, Andrew Woolfolk, Ralph Johnson, Johnny Graham, on guitars, sax, percussion and drums. Zanibar is jam session number 2, and everybody got some. Woolfolk is BLOWING the sax, Dunn talking on keys, and the percussions are driving the rhythmn.

I saw them in concert the year this album was released. They opened for The Stylistics and (get this) The SYLVERS!! EWF was Absolutely Fantastic and I have been hooked ever since!!!

Let's face it:Earth Wind & Fire are one of those groups that do have a number of fairly distinct musical periods. They're all pretty hard to define by name and sometimes pass very quickly but,much as with James Brown and The Beatles before them they always had a way of getting people on board with them. One important thing this album did do was solidify the bands classic lineup more so than the highly transitional Columbia debut

had. Even though at this phase they hadn't yet fully developed the distinction they had on albums such as

the musical flourishes of then newcomers Fred White,Johnny Graham and Al McKay really give a lot of body to this music. And that's a very important point too because this is the step off point from where Earth Wind & Fire went from being largely a gravel raw soul/funk band into one that had a certain type of slickness and smoothness in the production.

The one important thing to note here is that Charles Stepney hadn't yet become involved in the production of the band yet so we find Maurice and co. having to find there own way around production slickness. One thing to be noted about this album is that there is a very intense latin-jazz flavor to most of the music on this album;one can here the influences of similarly flavored jazz-funk then being turned out by Roy Ayers,Lonnie Liston Smith during this period on songs such as "Evil","Clover",featuring Phillip Bailey singing in his lowest voice possible and the enlonged instrumental version of Sergio Mendes's tune "Zanzibar. Not only do all of these songs feature a lot of spiritually pastoral lyrical metaphores (the cover art to this album reflects the music quite well actually) but music that likewise seems to grow in terms of chord progressions and musical inventiveness. This is one of the most thoroughly instrumentally based album EWF probably ever made and even Maurice White once pointed out how this music put the band into sync with the best musicians of that era.

Of course heavily reverbed,breezy psychedelic soul type midtempo ballads such as "Keep Your Head To The Sky",an early EWF hit and "The World's A Masquerade" add a good change of pace to the proceedings and "Build Your Nest" is one of the best early examples of the type of slick yet heavy bottomed funk they band would make their trademark with shortly. The elements in the music that are still being worked out are the fact the band still have a quirkiness that's actually very random. For example-at the end of the song "Clover" someone is making a very mournfull sound on the guerro which sounds rather...pained and it provides an eerie contrast to the beautiful grooves that predominate most of this album. Maybe it was a fluke or someone's reminder of some of the darker elements of the early 70's but it's that and other such aspects that keep this album still set apart from what's to come. And perhaps that is why it's one of only a few 70's EWF titles currently out of print domestically because of it's sense of floating between commercialism and artistic integrity. No matter how you cut it it's definately one of this bands most potently creative albums and for an example of the pure artistry of Earth Wind & Fire this might be an excellent place to go even as a starting point.