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Heatwave VibeZ

Nine tracks from a band assembled in Germany by American servicemen, fronted by two brothers from Ohio, with songs by an Englishman who would later write for Michael Jackson.

 

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Heatwave

Heatwave have one of the most unlikely origin stories in soul music. Johnnie Wilder Jr. was a serviceman from Dayton, Ohio stationed in Germany; he formed a band there, brought in his brother Keith, and recruited members from Britain, Jamaica, Czechoslovakia, Spain and Switzerland.

Among them was a keyboard player from Lincolnshire named Rod Temperton, who turned out to be one of the great songwriters of the era. He wrote most of what made Heatwave famous, then left to write "Rock With You", "Off the Wall" and "Thriller" for Michael Jackson.

The band's story turned tragic in 1979 when Johnnie Wilder Jr. was left paralysed by a car accident. He continued to sing and produce from a wheelchair, and died in 2006; Keith Wilder died in 2017.

What to listen for

"Always and Forever" is the one everyone knows, and it has become a standard of a particular kind — the first dance at an enormous number of weddings, and a record whose chord movement is considerably more sophisticated than its ubiquity suggests.

"Boogie Nights" is the dancefloor record and the group's biggest international hit.

"The Groove Line" is the funkiest thing here and the clearest demonstration of Temperton's rhythmic writing — listen to how the vocal line sits against the bass.

"Mind Blowing Decisions" is the connoisseur's pick and a considerable favourite in Britain.

"The Star of a Story" is the most harmonically adventurous thing they recorded and has been sampled repeatedly, and "Sho'Nuff Must be Luv" is the deepest cut.

"Gangsters of the Groove" is the later record and shows the band moving into eighties boogie territory.

Go deeper

Too Hot to Handle (1977) and Central Heating (1978) are the two essential albums.

Then follow Rod Temperton. His writing for Michael Jackson, George Benson, Quincy Jones and The Brothers Johnson is one of the great songwriting catalogues of the era, and he gave almost no interviews across an entire career.

Listening note: listen for the writing rather than the groove. The chord movement under the ballads is considerably more sophisticated than the genre required, and the way the vocal lines sit against the bass on the uptempo tracks is the same hand that would shortly write the biggest-selling album in history for someone else.

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