The paean to his mother that Maurice White wrote tugs a little harder on the heartstrings when you realize that she didn’t raise him. He was a boy when his mother remarried and moved to Chicago, leaving him with his grandmother in South Memphis, where Booker T. Jones was a high school friend. Maurice saw his mom on his frequent visits to Chicago before he moved there to study at the Chicago Conservatory after graduation.
White spent five years as a drummer for Chess Records in the early ’60s, playing behind most of that label’s artists, and joined jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis’ second trio for nearly five years before forming EWF in 1969. In 1970 he relocated to Los Angeles and reorganized the band, moving out front to share lead vocals with Philip Bailey and adding his younger half-brother Verdine White on bass. The band reached their peak in 1975 with the No. 1 album “That’s the Way of the World,” which featured No. 1 single “Shining Star.” They were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.
EWF’s days as a sales force ended after the ’80s, but every one of their 21 studio albums made the R&B charts, including their last LP, 2014’s “Holiday.” Maurice White died in 2016 of Parkinson’s disease, but the band remains active behind Bailey and Verdine.
“Mom” appeared on the band’s third LP, 1972’s “Last Days and Time,” and reached No. 39 on the Cashbox R&B singles chart. Maurice co-wrote it with Verdine, who was born Verdine Adams Jr. and did grow up with their mother and her second husband.
