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Classic Recordings: “All ‘n’ All” by Earth, Wind & Fire

Eleven tracks, two interludes, and a band operating at the outer limit of what a pop group can be. All 'n All is Earth, Wind & Fire's most ambitious record.

All 'n All, 1977

By 1977 Earth, Wind & Fire had already had enormous success, and Maurice White responded by making the band's most complicated album. He travelled to Brazil and Argentina before recording it, and the South American influence runs through everything — not as decoration but as structure.

The record was released with an elaborate Egyptian-and-cosmology-themed sleeve by Japanese artist Shusei Nagaoka, which was entirely in keeping with White's project. Earth, Wind & Fire were a funk band that took spirituality, Egyptology and self-improvement seriously, and the mysticism was never a costume.

Musically it is a band with a horn section, a string arranger, multiple lead vocalists, and a willingness to put a two-minute Brazilian interlude in the middle of a commercial album.

What to listen for

"Serpentine Fire" opens the record and refers to kundalini energy, which is a bold thing to build a hit single around. The bassline — Verdine White — is one of the great performances in funk.

"Fantasy" is the most beloved: a genuinely uplifting song without a trace of cynicism, and one of the few records that earns the word joyful. Philip Bailey's falsetto on it is extraordinary.

"Jupiter" and "Magic Mind" are the hardest-driving tracks, and "Runnin'" is an instrumental that won a Grammy — a jazz-fusion piece on a pop album, played at a tempo that would defeat most bands.

"Brazilian Rhyme" is a ninety-second wordless interlude that has been sampled by dozens of hip-hop producers and covered by musicians who first heard it here.

"Love's Holiday" and "Be Ever Wonderful" are the ballads, and "I'll Write a Song for You" is the one that reduces people.

Go deeper

That's the Way of the World (1975) is the other essential album, and Gratitude (1975) is the live record.

Charles Stepney is the name to chase — the Chicago arranger and producer who shaped Earth, Wind & Fire's harmonic language and also worked with Ramsey Lewis, Minnie Riperton and Rotary Connection. He died in 1976, and this album is partly a working-out of what he taught them.

For the Brazilian thread, Milton Nascimento and Airto Moreira are the connections, and Maurice White's interest in that music predates most American musicians' by years.

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