From Stax to Earth, Wind & Fire: The Emotions’ Disco Breakthrough
When you think of The Emotions, you probably think of Best of My Love.
It’s one of those songs that seems to have always existed. Put it on and immediately you’re somewhere between a 1970s dance floor, a Soul band’s first set, and a wedding where everyone suddenly knows the words.
But Best of My Love wasn’t the beginning of The Emotions’ story. Far from it.
The group had already spent years developing their sound before they found the combination of songwriting, production and musicians that would turn them into international stars.
Gospel Roots
The women who became The Emotions grew up singing gospel and began performing with their father while they were still teenagers.
That background would remain important throughout their career. Even when their music moved into R&B, Soul and eventually Disco, the thing that really separated The Emotions from many other groups was their vocal harmony.
They weren’t simply a group singing pop songs. There was a church-trained strength and precision to those voices.
Their first major opportunity came through Volt, the Stax Records subsidiary associated with some of the greatest Soul music of the 1960s and early ’70s.
This was an extraordinary musical environment. Stax was home to artists such as Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Albert King, McFadden & Whitehead, and the legendary house band Booker T. & the M.G.’s.
The Emotions worked with Isaac Hayes and released several albums and singles, gradually developing as an R&B and Soul group.
The problem was that the big breakthrough never came. For around six years they kept working, recording and developing, but despite some success, they didn’t produce the major hit that would change everything.
Then Stax collapsed in 1975. It could easily have been the end of the story. Instead, it turned out to be the beginning of the most successful chapter.
Earth, Wind & Fire Change Everything
After moving to Columbia Records, The Emotions began working with members of Earth, Wind & Fire. This was a crucial meeting of musicians.
The Emotions already had the voices. Earth, Wind & Fire had developed an extraordinary combination of Funk, Soul, Jazz, R&B and increasingly Disco.
Suddenly the sisters’ harmonies were sitting on top of a completely different kind of groove. And it worked. The first huge result was Best of My Love.
Released in 1977, the song became their biggest hit, reaching number one in the United States. More importantly, it sounded effortless.
The groove is simple enough to make you want to dance immediately, but underneath it there’s a lot going on: tight rhythm guitar, bass, drums, percussion, keyboards and those beautifully arranged vocal parts.
For a guitarist, this is exactly the sort of song that can teach you something. You don’t need to play loads of notes. You need to lock in.
The guitar part has to sit with the rhythm section, leaving enough space for the bass and vocals while still helping create the movement of the song.
That’s one of the great lessons of Disco and Funk: sometimes the best guitar playing is the stuff you barely notice.
Best of My Love
Best of My Love is also a great example of why learning songs for your repertoire is different from simply learning the chords.
On paper, it isn’t necessarily a complicated song. But try playing it with a band and you’ll quickly discover that the feel matters enormously.
The rhythm needs to be consistent. The accents need to land in the right places. Muting matters. Also look at other members of the band, Notice how the bass players lines fits with the horns.
It’s the sort of tune where you can know every chord and still not sound anything like the record. That’s why it’s such a useful guitar lesson. The groove is the arrangement.
And then there are the vocals. The Emotions’ harmonies give the song its identity. Their gospel background suddenly makes perfect sense because those vocal parts aren’t just decoration—they are one of the main instruments in the arrangement.
Boogie Wonderland
The partnership with Earth, Wind & Fire wasn’t a one-off. Two years later came Boogie Wonderland, another enormous Disco hit.
By now, The Emotions had become perfectly suited to this sound. Their Gospel and Soul background gave the music emotional depth, while Earth, Wind & Fire supplied the sophisticated Funk and Disco framework.
It’s worth remembering just how crowded the late-’70s disco landscape was. You had Chic, Sister Sledge, the Bee Gees, The Pointer Sisters, Rose Royce, The Trammps and many others all producing songs that are still played today.
And yet The Emotions had their own place in it. Their secret weapon was those voices.
The Disco Backlash
The late 1970s were the peak of The Emotions’ commercial success, but Disco itself was about to go through a dramatic backlash.
In 1979, the infamous Disco Demolition Night in Chicago became a symbol of the growing hostility towards the genre.
The slogan was essentially that disco was dead. It wasn’t. Not really.
The sound changed, and the fashion changed, but the musical ideas behind Disco—four-on-the-floor drums, bass-driven grooves, syncopated guitar, percussion and strong vocal hooks—never disappeared.
The Emotions continued recording into the 1980s, even though they never quite repeated the extraordinary success of Best of My Love and Boogie Wonderland.
And perhaps that’s an important part of their story. They weren’t an overnight Disco act.
They were a vocal group who had spent years learning their craft, survived the collapse of Stax, changed labels, changed musical direction and eventually found themselves at the centre of one of the biggest musical movements of the decade.
The Guitar Lesson
For guitarists, The Emotions are a great reminder that your job in a band isn’t always to be the most noticeable musician.
Listen to Best of My Love and you’ll hear a huge production, the guitar is there to support the groove. This is something I find particularly fun when playing Disco and Funk songs. Approach the tunes like this:
Start with the rhythm. Get the muting right. Work on the accents. Then figure out what you can leave out.
If you’re playing in a working band, that’s incredibly valuable. A guitarist who understands how to create space can make the whole band sound better.
And once you add The Emotions to your repertoire, you naturally open the door to all those connected artists: Earth, Wind & Fire, Chic, Sister Sledge, The Pointer Sisters, Rose Royce and the Bee Gees.
Suddenly you’re not learning isolated songs. You’re learning a musical language.
The Emotions’ Legacy
The Emotions’ story is really about perseverance and finding the right musical environment. They began in Gospel, developed through Soul and R&B, spent years at Stax without a major breakthrough, and eventually found Earth, Wind & Fire.
Best of My Love became their signature song. Boogie Wonderland gave them another timeless disco classic. And decades later, both songs remain exactly the kind of tunes that make sense for a guitarist building a repertoire.
They’re fun to play, great for working bands, and packed with lessons about rhythm, harmony, arrangement and—most importantly—groove.
So if you’re learning Best of My Love, don’t just learn the chords. Listen to how everything fits together. Then play it with a band. That’s the place where The Emotions really start to make sense – on the dance floor.
The Emotions 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…
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