Fire / Together

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Ohio Players drummer James Williams has a good story about the song that became “Fire.” The band had been playing a show in Los Angeles when they got a visit from Stevie Wonder, who asked what the band members had been working on. They played a few things. <i>That one</i>, Wonder said, pausing the tape. It didn’t have lyrics yet, but Wonder said they could call it whatever they wanted, and it’d <i>still</i> sell like crazy: rock, paper, scissors—whatever. But the consensus was that the track smoked. And so, never being a band inclined to complicate things, the Ohio Players settled on calling it “Fire.” Along with <i>Skin Tight</i> and <i>Honey</i>, the album that followed brought the band further out of the niche of Black radio and into the mainstream. One wonders how strange, liberating, and weird it must’ve felt to hear “Fire” as the No. 1 song in the country between weeks where the spot had been held by Neil Sedaka and Linda Ronstadt. Polished as they were, this was, above all, Black music, with all the cultural ripples Black music made. The improvisatory quality of <i>Skin Tight</i> carried over (“Smoke”). But the ballads got more substantive too (“Together”). And while their general dirty-mindedness always had a glint of humor to it, the members of the Ohio Players were figuring out ways of making the sheer musical kinesis of funk funny in and of itself (“It’s All Over”). Stack it against the other big records of the year, and it’s hard to believe something with so much personality—especially so much loose, proud, libidinal Black energy—sold so well. As the band noted, the music was pretty good—but the ladies on the album covers didn’t hurt.

via Apple Music