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The Genius of Charles Stepney

Twenty-five records by an arranger who shaped the sound of Chicago soul, died at forty-five, and is still not nearly as famous as his work.

Charles-Stepney

Charles Stepney (1931–1976)

Charles Stepney is the most important figure in this blog's producer series that most listeners will never have heard of. A Chicago arranger, composer and producer who worked at Chess Records in the sixties, he brought a formal musical education — vibraphone, orchestration, an ear trained on Ravel and Ellington as much as on blues — into the middle of a soul label.

What he did with it was extraordinary. His arrangements are harmonically adventurous in ways that pop records of the period simply were not, using string and woodwind voicings that come from art music and placing them under grooves that are entirely funk.

He co-produced and arranged the run of Earth, Wind & Fire albums that made them the biggest band in America, produced The Emotions, Deniece Williams and Rotary Connection, and died of a heart attack in 1976, aged forty-five, just as his best-known work was peaking.

What to listen for

Earth, Wind & Fire's "Reasons" is the one everyone knows, and the arrangement is the reason it works — listen to what the strings and the electric piano are doing under Philip Bailey's falsetto.

"That's the Way of the World" and "Devotion" are the other essential EW&F tracks here, and both are more harmonically complex than their serenity suggests.

Rotary Connection's "Didn't Want To Have To Do It" is the deepest cut and the most revealing — a psychedelic-soul group featuring a young Minnie Riperton, and the arrangement is genuinely strange.

Deniece Williams' "Free" is the record where his method is most exposed: that floating, weightless quality comes entirely from the voicing of the backing parts.

The Dells' "Stay In My Corner" and "The Love We Had" are the Chess-era productions, and the first is six minutes long, which was close to unthinkable for a 1968 soul single.

The Emotions' "Flowers" and "Don't Ask My Neighbors"-adjacent material show the vocal-group work, and Ramsey Lewis's "Sun Goddess" is the jazz crossover.

Marlena Shaw's "Go Away Little Boy" is the one hip-hop producers have sampled most.

Go deeper

Step on Step, an archival collection of his home demos released in 2022 on International Anthem, is a remarkable document — the sound of these arrangements being worked out alone at a keyboard.

Rotary Connection's early albums and Minnie Riperton's Come to My Garden, which he arranged, are the two records to hear next.

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