Dwight Brooks: The opening line of Earth Wind and Fire's 1978 Smash Ship September asks, Do you remember the 21st night of September? The date itself has a mix of musical and some deeply personal meanings, while the song has evolved into one of the most successful and enduring tracks in music history. This special episode of tracking Earth, Wind and Fire takes you on a deep dive into that special song. The lyrics, the music, and the musicians. It's Monday, September 21st. And if you're watching or listening, you know what that means. Happy Earth, Wind, and Fire Day. Yes, it's actually an official day in Los Angeles, the home of my friend Soleh Brewer, and so many of you in the audience. But we're all going to celebrate the 21st of September. Thanks for tuning in to this very special episode of Tracking Earth, Wind and Fire. I'm your host, Doc Brooks. And if you're new to my podcast, welcome. I want to earn your subscription to my weekly podcasts. Subscriptions are free. Just hit that subscribe button, especially on YouTube. You can follow each episode's playlist on Spotify, and I welcome your emails at trackingewf at gmail.com. September was originally written over the span of a month as a throwaway song. Meant to solely boost sales for the best of Earth Wind and Fire, Volume 1. Now that song, September, was recorded in, you guessed it, September of 1978, and released as a single in November of 1978. It immediately skyrocketed to number one on the RB charts and reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100. Music historians often cite September as the fifth most successful song in music history. The Song was officially inducted into the Library of Congress's national recording registry in twenty nineteen for its cultural importance. September has taken on a life of its own. As you may know, every year on September 21st, streaming numbers of the songs spike dramatically. and cities worldwide throw designated September parties to celebrate the date, which as we will see may actually refer to very little in particular. Yet it remains a cross-generational staple at weddings, graduations, family reunions, cookouts. And a variety of public events. The song is a hallmark of the band's body of work and has been sampled, covered, remixed, and re recorded more than once. For example, September has been featured in many films. Do you remember, pun intended, September being played in the fictional wedding that opened the 1997 movie Soul Food? I do. Cisco and Vitamin C covered the song during the closing credits of the film Get Over It in 2001. And Night of the Museum in 2006 has it in the last scene before the end credits. And a version featuring a band accompanied by Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake is featured in the 2016 film Trolls. The 2019 film Polar features the song playing during its opening sequence, with the characters singing along to it together after pulling off their own successful hit. And finally, the 2023 film Robot Dreams is. uses the song multiple times, including to accompany the climax. Covers of the song include Kirk Franklin's 2007 rendition on the 2007 tribute album Interpretations, celebrating the music of Earth Wind and Fire. And it was released as a lead single to promote the album. Taylor Swift released a somewhat controversial acoustic cover of Earth Wind and Fire September in April of 2018. Even Earthwind and Fire recorded a new version of the song retitled December for their 2014 Christmas album Holiday. This version changes the date reference in the lyric to the 25th of December to make the song a Christmas song, but it otherwise was identical to the original recording. The December version from Holiday appears in a 2022 Christmas TV commercial for Kohl's. Now let's focus on the original recording. Let me introduce you to Allee Willis, one of the co-writers of September. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a journalism major and later became an activist, in her words, marching and demonstrating during the 1960s. After college, she moved to New York City in 1969 and worked as a secretary at Columbia Records as a copywriter. Writing liner notes and advertising material before turning to songwriting and actually performing. She released her first and only album, Childstar, in 1974. it didn't do very well, she decided to stop performing. However, her album attracted the interest of Bonnie Raitt who became the first musician to record one of Willis's songs. So in 1977, Willis moved to Los Angeles and worked as a songwriter at AM Records, where she wrote songs with and for Patty LaBelle and Herbie Hancock. In 1978, a mutual friend introduced her to Verdine White, and in turn, Maurice White. And so she co-wrote September and a few other songs for Earth, Wind and Fire. She went on to co-write. Boogie Wonderland with John Lind and In the Stone with Maurice White and David Foster. Sadly, Allee Willis passed away on Christmas Eve, twenty nineteen, at the age of seventy-two. Let's consider the date. What is the meaning of the 21st night? Is there a musical explanation? Both Willis and lead singer Maurice White originally revealed that the date held no literal historical significance. White simply chose the 21st because the phrasing had the best musical cadence and flowed perfectly when sung. However, decades later, White's wife Marilyn told musician Questlove for his documentary that September 21st, 1978 was actually the expected due date of Maurice's son, Kahbran. Questlove broke the news while he was promoting his film on the Tonight Show, starring Jimmy Fallon. And according to People magazine, when Marilyn White first heard the song in their home studio, She recalled feeling like it was, quoting her words here, a secret message between her and the band leader. And although Kahbran was actually born prematurely, the date remained in the song as a secret nod of joy to his upcoming birth. Allee Willis initially hated the nonsensical "Ba Dee Ya" phrasing used throughout the song. White famously overrode her objections, emphasizing his rule that groove and feel always supersede literal lyrics. Here's how Reese would express it: never let the lyrics get in the way of a groove. So Allee Willis has given her own accounts of how she landed that gig with Earth, Wind and Fire. In fact, I enjoyed reading her interview in the Creative Independent magazine and listening to her in an interview with NPR titled The Song That Never Ends. As Willis tells it, in 1978 she was a starving artist in Los Angeles when she unexpectedly got a call from Maurice White. She walked into the studio the next morning, terrified that it was a cosmic joke, in her words, played by her friends. Instead, she opened the door to the studio. Guitarists Al McKay and Maurice White were actively tracking the iconic driving intro chord progression. And so she recalled thinking. Dear God, let this be what they want me to write, because it was obviously the happiest sounding song in the world. On the other hand, she definitely struggled with the simplicity of the lyrics. As a journalism major in college, she initially fought to make the lyrics complex, story driven, and perhaps even grammatically standard. To her, words were sacred, and she hated "Ba Dee Ya" phrasing and begged White to change it to real words right up into the final mix. And so when she finally demanded to know what the F? Body I meant, White gave her his simple yet profound songwriting advice, because to him music was sacred. Who gives a sh? The groove must never be sacrificed for the lyric. So the two had a month long battle of wits, and yeah, we know who won. Although Willis conceded the battle, and history proved Maurice White right, the songwriter, Allee Willis, Took that lesson and used it to write massive hits later in her career, including The Pointer Sisters Neutron Dance, and even the iconic theme song to the TV show Friends, of which she called the whitest song I ever wrote. Ha ha. With that out of the way, I should add that some people conflate the three-syllable body ya lyrics with party on. And although there's nothing wrong with that if it works for them. But That's not what they're singing. So let's find out a little bit more about the creative process for September. despite sounding like a relatively simple song, it was not simple to record. The band didn't just come into the studio and jam. And as we just learned, the lyrics did not fall right into place. I've heard and read all kinds of invented, in some cases, convoluted astrological or Seasonal reasons for the date, the 21st of September. I will tell you shortly why I think at least one of these may have some merit. Allee Willis confirmed in interviews that they literally sat in the studio singing every single number. Do you remember the first, the second, the third, and on and on and on? Well, they were just looking for the number that bounced correctly against Al McKay's guitar rhythm. And apparently the number 21 was used because it had the most natural vocal cadence. So let's now learn about the other song co-writer, Al McKay. The left-handed grandmaster of Funk was born in New Orleans. And before he joined Earth, Wind and Fire in 1973, he played with the Ike and Tina Turner Review and Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band. Like Maurice White, McKay was an in-demand session player who performed with such diverse artists as Sammy Davis Jr. The Jackson 5, Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight, Andy Williams, Isaac Hayes, and The Silvers. And he utilized a variety of guitar techniques from some of the best elements of American music. And besides his deep pocket and stimulating sense of groove, listeners cannot help but appreciate his ability to lock in between Verdine White's bass guitar and Freddie White's drums. His relentless sense of rhythm can be heard on Getaway just as much as his memorable melodies in Sing a Song. Now, in terms of creating September, McKay told Spotify in 2018 that, and I'm quoting now, it was one of those mornings. I came downstairs feeling really good and went to my studio, set up a groove, and it just came, piece by piece. I brought it to Maurice White and he liked it right away. And then he said, play it again, and I kept playing it for him. The last time he looked at me and he sang, Do you remember? So let's go a little deeper into McKay's guitar work. Now, for us non-musicians, I'll keep this simple, although I've learned a little bit about music from my own research and as well as from my many musician friends and family. For musicians who want a more detailed analysis of September, check out the American Songwriter feature article entitled Behind that song, September. But I'm going to focus on McKay's guitar loop, which can be described as hypnotic because of a sort of psychological trick that is baked into McKay's chord progression. It not only compels you to the dance floor, it captivates you as you listen. And as I noted earlier, McKay built the track's core architecture alone in his home studio. He used a highly specific Repetitive two bar chord pattern. think about your music classes in school or your music lessons as a youth. September is written in the key of A major. However, McKay's signature progression actually starts on the D major seven chord. That's the four chord of the scale. Then a C minus sharp minor. B minor and F sharp minor. So it loops around and around. But notice what's missing. He completely skips the root chord of A major. Now, in music theory, landing on the root chord gives the listener a sense of closure and sort of arriving home. And so by avoiding the root, McKay creates a continuous loop of tension, a healthy tension, I might add. So it might help to think of it as a sonic hamster wheel of pure joy, because the progression never completely resolves. Your brain never gets a resting point. It keeps the tune in a constant state of forward momentum, which can translate directly to the listener's feet. Even if it's just you tapping your own feet. It's a hypnotic loop because the music itself never sits down. So Here is Al McKay's shell chord technique. He actually played the guitar part to cut through the massive earth, wind, and fire horn and percussion sections. Instead of playing big, heavy, sounding, booming chords, he used what are known as shell chords. Stripped down versions of chords using only two or three essential notes, primarily on the middle strings. He uses his left hand, which he was a left-handed guitarist, to lightly mute the strings he wasn't playing. This gave his strumming a highly percussive clicking sound, often called scratch or chug guitar. So in a nutshell, McKay wasn't just playing chords, he was playing a drum kit on six strings. By stripping the chords down to their bare bones and heavily muting his strings, he carved out a precise razor sharp pocket in the frequency spectrum. And this allowed his guitar to slice right through Verdine White's booming bass lines and the blazing Phoenix horns without clogging up the track. It's basically a less is more funk arrangement. The first few bars of the song feature Larry Dunn's keyboard outlining chords, a cowbell keeping time with quarter notes, and the band's two guitarists, Al McKay and Johnny Graham. McKay, as we said, playing octave A notes while Graham riffs a funky, sliding staccato single note line. Bassist Verdine White enters with an octave bass riff and a flurry of Phoenix horns. Set up the vocals and the song is off and rollin'. So before we close this deep dive, a little poetic touch is in order. Some have tied the song to the first day of fall. And I'm with them because being the avid reader that Maurice White was, he may just possibly have been influenced by a poem titled September by Helen Hunt Jackson. Check out the closing verse to her 19th century rhyme. You ready? But none of all this beauty which floods the earth and air is unto me the secret which makes September fair. 'Tis a thing which I remember, to name it thrills me yet. One day of September I can never forget. If you're watching, you can see how those lyrics are reminiscent of Earth Within Fire. Right? And if you're listening, I hope you caught the poem's references to air and earth and remembering. I can say with confidence, though, that September wasn't a calculated corporate pop song. I contend it was a song about an enduring love where we can conjure up our own images of romance, a clear sky, and dancing under the stars. Perhaps it was even a poetic inspired composition, but undoubtedly it was a song that fused a very special date with an unresolving guitar loop, a father's secret joy, and a songwriter who thought she was being pranked. That was punctuated by a bass guitar and the Phoenix horns. What do you think? I'd love to get your comments about this very special song and some of the backstories that we don't know for sure, but some have merit. So, with that in order, let's end this musical deep diver with a live ending from the Phoenix Horns. Thank you for tuning in to this special episode of Tracking Earth, Wind, and Fire. As always, I welcome your comments about this special episode andor the podcast in general. Hit me up with an email. T-R-A-C-K-I-N-G EWF at gmail.com. Okay? You can also listen to the songs from my playlist about this episode on Spotify. So besides September's studio and live records, I'm gonna list some songs from other people who did versions of September. Smooth jazz, there's a smooth sax component. you'll hear lots of songs from Earth, Wind and Fire's greatest hits Volume 1. And other songs written by Allee Willis. So until next time, I close by wishing you a happy September 21st and a happy month of September with The original music for this podcast by the award-winning producer-songwriter D. Mile, You know what to do.