Earth, Wind & Fire - the most successful soul/funk group of the '70s and one of the most important black bands of all time - has a vibrant recent live CD of previously unreleased material from their classic 1975 "That's the Way of the World Tour."

Co-produced by Maurice White, the leader/singer/songwriter/drummer/producer of the band, Paul Klingberg, and my good friend Leo Sacks, That's the Way of the World: Alive in '75 finds the band in peak form rocking sparkling versions of "Shining Star," "Sun Goddess" (with guest Ramsey Lewis on keyboards), "Reasons," "Mighty Mighty," and 8 1/2 minutes of "That's the Way Of the World."

The complex rhythms interlace magically, the group vocals soar and shimmer, and the sound quality is state of the art. The version of the band that is touring this summer is still fine, led by Maurice's brother bassist Verdine White and lead singer Philip Bailey, but this disc is the next best thing to transporting yourself back 27 years when it was all still new, now, and smoking hot.

As the great David Ritz writes in the liner notes to the new disc,

Music is a miracle. Its most precious properties - energy, joy and hope - are rooted in a spirit both human and devine. The miracles born out of African-American music are especially abundant, perhaps because its source is sacred. In both primal and sophisticated forms, the music balances the weights or survival and salvation. It is a music whose rhythms pulsate with the oldest cultural news and, at the same time, the most current.

Earth, Wind & Fire was elected into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, with 7 Grammys, over 30 charting singles, and 20 charting albums (seven Top 10's) from the '70s into the '90s. Now retired from the band, White stirred EW&F's joyous blend of gospel, funk, jazz, rock, disco, and African music into a soulful, thumping nectar that he describes as "my love, my heart."

Maurice White was born one of nine children December 19, 1941, in Memphis, and raised by his grandmother while his father attended medical school in Chicago. White listened to R&B, blues, jazz, and early rock 'n' roll throughout his childhood, and sang gospel in church, at home and with a quartet, The Rosehill Jubilettes. Styling themselves after Sam Cooke's Soul Stirrers, the Jubilettes traveled throughout the South performing at churches.

At 12 White saw a marching band strut through the streets of Memphis and became fixed on the power of the drum. He went home, broke a broom in half and started rat-a-tat-tatting on any available surface. In junior high White became friends with multi-instrumentalist Booker T. Jones and they played together in various jazz ensembles. As a high school student, White played in a hot R&B band, The Mad Lads, and after graduation he joined his parents in Chicago.