{"id":13703,"date":"2012-04-02T16:39:18","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T20:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=13703"},"modified":"2012-04-02T16:39:18","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T20:39:18","slug":"earth-wind-fires-maurice-white-accused-of-cheating-dead-producer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=13703","title":{"rendered":"Earth, Wind &amp; Fire\u2019s Maurice White Accused Of Cheating Dead Producer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Famed R&amp;B group<strong> Earth, Wind &amp; Fire\u2019s<\/strong> founding member <strong>Maurice White<\/strong> has been accused of neglecting to pay<strong> Charles Stepney<\/strong>, who produced some of his greatest hits.<\/p>\n<p>The only problem is that <strong>Stepney<\/strong> has been deceased for 36 years, so his children are suing <strong>White<\/strong> for royalties they claim their dad never received.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stepney<\/strong> was responsible for classics as <em>Shining Star<\/em>, <em>Devotion<\/em>, <em>Sing a Song<\/em> and <em>Mighty, Mighty<\/em>. The producer was also an arranger, songwriter and musician who achieved stellar success in all four areas during the sixties and seventies. He worked with <strong>Ramsey Lewis<\/strong>, <strong>Chaka Khan<\/strong>, <strong>The Dells<\/strong> and <strong>The Emotions<\/strong>. <strong>Stevie Wonder<\/strong>, <strong>Elton John<\/strong> and <strong>Terry Callier<\/strong> have made it known that they were heavily influenced by Stepney\u2019s talents.<\/p>\n<p>One of <strong>Earth, Wind &amp; Fire\u2019s<\/strong> greatest songs, <em>\u201cSpirit,\u201d<\/em> was a tribute to <strong>Stepney<\/strong>. The producer, however, never got a chance to even hear the song of gratitude that the group had dedicated to him. <strong>Stepney<\/strong> died of a heart attack on May 17, 1976 at 45-years-young.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Famed R&amp;B group Earth, Wind &amp; Fire\u2019s founding member Maurice White has been accused of neglecting to pay Charles Stepney, who produced some of his greatest hits. The only problem is that Stepney has been deceased for 36 years, so his children are suing White for royalties they claim their dad never received. Stepney was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}