Thanks to the upcoming documentary, “Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That’s the Weight of the World),” which recently premiered on opening night at this year’s 25th Tribeca Festival, people online are now revisiting the iconic group’s music and dissecting the ups and downs of its leader, Maurice White. But what you may be surprised to know is that for all of White’s elevated thinking and positive way of life, his own personal story is surprisingly a bit more complicated and messy than you might believe.
Take, for instance, his upbringing. White was born and raised in Memphis to parents Edna (who was 17 when she had him) and John White. However, after John decided to go his own way, Edna was left to raise Maurice on her own. Sadly, he wouldn’t have the chance to reconnect with his father later in life, as John—who was known locally as a gangster and nightclub owner—would be shot and killed all before Maurice turned five.
That age would prove pivotal once again for Maurice, as Edna decided to leave him in Memphis so that she could find higher-paying work cleaning homes for white people in Chicago. All alone, Maurice was eventually taken in and raised by a neighborhood Black woman known affectionately as “Big Momma.” With some level of stability in tow, Maurice would go on to find an interest in the drums after randomly watching drummers parade down the Memphis streets in shiny suits. After teaching himself how to play, he tried out for the band in school and got in.
The time Maurice spent playing in the band became a reprieve for him, especially as he grew up in a segregated city and experienced the challenges that came with it. As noted in the documentary, while working as a bicycle newspaper boy in a white neighborhood, Maurice was stopped by police, harassed, and beaten for a long time. After that experience, the soon-to-be iconic singer would view music as an escape from both the trauma in his neighborhood and his own personal life.
Thankfully, Maurice’s talents soon made room for him and landed him outside the confines of Memphis and into a spot in the Ramsey Lewis Jazz Trio. Around 1970, he got the idea to put together his own band (with the name taking cues from the elements in his astrological chart) and thus, Earth, Wind and Fire was born. Unfortunately, success wasn’t immediate for them as Maurice and the group struggled for the first 18 months under their contract with Warner Bros. Records. But after a little bit of manifesting, intentionality, practice, the right band members, and the right songs—the group would finally start getting the recognition they rightfully deserved.
Sadly, by the time 1977 rolled around, despite the fame and “fortune” they were experiencing, the money math wasn’t exactly “mathing.” In fact, that year, they learned that the group was half a million dollars in debt and had been accruing more and more with each passing year. The group would also later learn that Maurice had been withholding all of their publishing monies for the first eight years that they’d been together.
To make matters worse, in 1983, Maurice decided to abruptly end Earth, Wind, & Fire so that he could pursue his solo career and continue to produce other artists under his own company, Kalimba Productions. Per members Philip Bailey, Ralph Johnson, and Maurice’s own half-brother Verdine White—they all were called into an impromptu meeting one day and were told that the group was over, effective immediately.
In Maurice’s personal life, things weren’t exactly copacetic there either. According to his long-term partner, Marilyn White (who spoke in the documentary), he was a serial cheater who fathered several children with other women outside of their relationship. Given his unstable work schedule and excessive touring, this made it hard for him to be a consistent and present partner or father while his kids were growing up.
Fast forward to 1987, and the group was surprisingly back together again, only this time around, Maurice moved with more of a democratic approach and equal respect between members. Unfortunately, the same vigor he once had for the stage and sound began to slowly fade as it was revealed in 1990 that he’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. And while he kept performing for as long as he could and made amends with his children over the years, he would eventually succumb to the disease in 2016.
