Circa 1971. First album release for Chicago based legends Earth Wind and Fire

 In 1969, Maurice White, a former session drummer for Chess Records and former member of the Ramsey Lewis Trio, joined two friends in Chicago, Wade Flemons and Don Whitehead, as a songwriting team composing songs and commercials in the Chicago area. The three friends got a recording contract with Capitol; they called themselves the "Salty Peppers" and had a marginal hit in the Midwestern area called "La La Time".[11] The Salty Peppers' second single, "Uh Huh Yeah", did not fare as well, and Maurice moved from Chicago to Los Angeles. He then added to the band singer Sherry Scott[12] and percussionist Yackov Ben Israel, both from Chicago, and then asked his younger brother Verdine how he would feel about heading out to the West Coast. On June 6, 1970, Verdine left Chicago to join the band as their new bassist. Maurice began shopping demo tapes of the band, featuring Donny Hathaway, around to different record labels and the band was thus signed to Warner Bros. Records.[11][13] Formation and early years (1971–1973) The cover of 1972 album Last Days and Time Maurice's astrological sign, Sagittarius, has a primary elemental quality of Fire and seasonal qualities of Earth and Air q.v. (Sagittarius in the northern hemisphere occurs in the fall, whose element is earth, and in the southern hemisphere, it is spring, whose element is air., the omission of Water, the fourth classical element). Based on this, he changed the band's name, to "Earth, Wind & Fire"