From September to Boogie Wonderland: Earth, Wind & Fire’s Hit Streak
Earth, Wind & Fire is one of those bands where the word groove doesn’t quite seem big enough.
Soul, Funk, Disco, Jazz, R&B, Pop — they brought all of it together and somehow made records that could fill a dance floor without sacrificing the musicianship underneath.
Their catalogue is enormous. Between 1971 and 2014, they released 21 studio albums and dozens of singles, selling tens of millions of records along the way.
But if you’re a guitarist building a working-band repertoire, you don’t need to learn everything. Start with the golden run. Between 1977 and 1979, Earth, Wind & Fire and their collaborators produced an extraordinary sequence of songs that still work almost anywhere you put them in a set.
The Golden Run
The bands biggest period came towards the end of the 1970s. During those years, they were responsible for a remarkable run of hits including Got to Get You into My Life, September, After the Love Has Gone and Boogie Wonderland.
And there’s an important connection between that run and another great soul group: The Emotions. Earth, Wind & Fire members wrote Best of My Love, which became The Emotions’ biggest hit in 1977.
Then came Boogie Wonderland, another collaboration between the two groups. So Earth, Wind & Fire weren’t simply having a great run themselves. They were helping create hits for other artists too, very much like Chic worked with Sister Sledge.
If you play in a Soul, Funk or Disco band, you’ll quickly discover why these songs have survived.
Best of My Love, Boogie Wonderland and September are crowd-pleasers.
It doesn’t really matter whether you’re playing to people in their twenties or people who were actually there when these records came out. The reaction is usually the same. People dance.
Best of My Love
Best of My Love was released by The Emotions in 1977 and became their biggest hit, reaching No. 1 in the United States.
It was written by members of Earth, Wind & Fire, and the collaboration proved to be a particularly fruitful one.
A couple of years later, The Emotions would appear again on Boogie Wonderland, giving us another essential piece of late-’70s dance-floor history.
Put these songs alongside the Bee Gees, Chic, Sister Sledge, The Pointer Sisters, Rose Royce and The Trammps, and you start to see just how rich the Disco and Funk repertoire of the period was.
For a working guitarist, this is a goldmine. You can learn the songs individually, but once you start putting them together, you’re really learning the language of late-’70s Funk and Disco.
September
If you only learn one Earth, Wind & Fire song, this is probably the obvious place to start. Released in 1978, September became an international hit and has remained one of those songs that simply refuses to disappear.
It’s played on the radio. DJs use it to fill dance floors. Bands use it when they need to lift the room. And audiences know it within seconds.
That’s a very useful quality in a working-band song. You don’t have to spend five minutes explaining what you’re about to play. The intro appear and people already know.
The interesting thing for guitarists is that September isn’t simply about learning a collection of chords. The rhythm is the important part.
Earth, Wind & Fire were an incredibly tight band, and every instrument contributes to the overall groove. The guitar has to fit inside that machine.
If you play the right chords with the wrong rhythm, it doesn’t sound like September. If you get the rhythm, muting, accents and timing right, suddenly the song starts to come alive. That’s a useful lesson for almost every funk or disco tune.
The groove is the arrangement. You can’t separate the guitar part from the rhythm section. So when you’re learning September, don’t rush through the chords just because they look straightforward.
Listen to the record. Copy the rhythm. Pay attention to the spaces. Then play it with a drummer. That’s when you’ll really understand it. My TAB and bakcing tracks will get you close but nothing beats playing it with other people.
Boogie Wonderland
After September came Boogie Wonderland. Released in 1979, it featured The Emotions and became another major Earth, Wind & Fire hit.
It’s difficult to imagine a better example of the band’s ability to combine sophisticated musicianship with something that is immediately accessible.
There’s Funk in there. There’s Disco. There’s Soul. And there’s a huge vocal arrangement courtesy of The Emotions.
For a working band, it’s another fantastic setlist tune. It also works nicely as a reminder that the late-’70s Disco scene wasn’t made up of isolated artists.
Earth, Wind & Fire, The Emotions, Chic, Sister Sledge, the Bee Gees and countless others were all part of a much bigger musical conversation. And those connections are worth learning.
If you’ve already learned September, Good Times and Le Freak, for example, you’re beginning to understand a whole musical vocabulary rather than simply memorising three songs.
After the Love Has Gone
The third major song in this run was After the Love Has Gone. Written by David Foster, Jay Graydon and Bill Champlin, it gave Earth, Wind & Fire another huge hit in 1979.
It’s a different side of the band. Where September and Boogie Wonderland are designed to get the dance floor moving, After the Love Has Gone is more sophisticated and harmony-driven.
And that’s one of the things I like about Earth, Wind & Fire. They weren’t just a Disco band. They had the musicianship to move between Funk, Soul, Jazz-influenced harmony and Pop without losing their identity.
For guitarists, that makes their catalogue much more interesting than simply learning the obvious party tunes.
Let’s Groove
And just when you might have thought the Disco era was finished, Earth, Wind & Fire came back with Let’s Groove in 1981.
The musical landscape had changed, but the band hadn’t lost their ability to create a dance-floor record.
The tune became another enduring favourite and proved that the Earth, Wind & Fire sound could survive the transition from the 1970s into the new decade.
This is something worth remembering when you’re building a repertoire. Don’t assume a song has become irrelevant just because the musical fashion around it has changed. If the groove is good enough, people will keep dancing.
The Guitar Lesson
There’s a reason Earth, Wind & Fire songs remain so useful for working guitarists. They force you to think about time.
A guitarist can learn hundreds of chords and still sound terrible if their rhythm isn’t solid.
With Earth, Wind & Fire, there’s nowhere to hide. You have to lock in. You have to understand syncopation. You have to control your muting. You have to leave space.
And, most importantly, you have to listen to the drummer and bass player.
This is particularly important with September. Don’t approach it as a chord exercise. Approach it as a groove exercise.
Once you can make a simple guitar part feel good against that rhythm section, you’ll have learned something that can be transferred to dozens of other Funk, Soul and Disco songs.
Building a Repertoire
Earth, Wind & Fire are almost a perfect case study in why building a repertoire isn’t simply about collecting famous songs.
Learn September, and you’re studying funk rhythm. Learn Best of My Love, and you’re connecting with The Emotions.
Learn Boogie Wonderland, and you’re working with a vocal arrangement that brings two great groups together. Learn After the Love Has Gone, and you’re exploring the band’s more sophisticated side.
Then add Let’s Groove, and suddenly you’ve covered more than a decade of dance-floor music.
And once you’ve also learned some Chic, Sister Sledge, the Bee Gees and The Pointer Sisters, the connections become even clearer.
You’re no longer learning isolated songs. You’re learning a musical language.
That’s the real value of Earth, Wind & Fire for a guitarist. The hits are fantastic, but the groove is the lesson.
Earth, Wind & Fire Tunes | Related Pages
Best Of My Love | Chords + TAB
You can learn how to play Best Of My Love by The Emotions using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, TAB, and backing tracks.
| F C/E | Dm C C/E | F C/E | Dm C C/E |
Doesn’t take much to make me happy, and make me smile with glee…
September | Chords + TAB
You can learn how to play September by Earth, Wind & Fire using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, TAB, and backing tracks.
| Dmaj7 C#m7 Bm7 | C#m7 F#m9 F#m7 |
Do you remember, the 21st night of September…
Earth, Wind & Fire on the web
