Fire

About

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 thing. <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 thing, 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 wa, above all, Black music, with all the cultural ripples Black music made. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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