Charles Stepney - Step on Step [International Anthem]

Format: LP + Gatefold + Obi.

International Anthem is proud to present Step on Step, a double-LP collection of home recordings that marks the eponymous debut album of enigmatic producer, arranger, and composer Charles Stepney (1931-1976). The music that comprises Step on Step was created by Stepney alone, in the basement of his South Side Chicago home, sometime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before his premature death in 1976.

Born and raised in Chicago, Stepney was an arranger, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and composer known for his work with Earth, Wind & Fire, Deniece Williams, and Ramsey Lewis, as well as being a staff producer at Chess Records in the 1960s, where he was an essential creative force behind seminal recordings by Rotary Connection, Minnie Riperton, Marlena Shaw, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Terry Callier, The Dells, The Emotions, among others. In the decades following his passing, the presence of his name in the credits and on vinyl labels has become a mark of quality for record collectors, music historians, and aficionados, while his sound has been sampled by countless hip-hop artists, including Kanye West, A Tribe Called Quest, The Fugees, MF Doom, and Madlib. But compared to the posthumous fame of his sound, or the music he created and the artists he supported while alive, Stepney remains a massively underrated figure… a genius relegated to the shadows.

One of the distinctive elements of his "baroque soul" sound is the epic, expansive expression of his horn and string arrangements (in many cases brought to life by members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), as heard on Minnie Riperton's Les Fleurs, Marlena Shaw's California Soul, or Terry Callier's What Color Is Love. This makes it all the more special that his de facto debut album Step on Step, seeing its first widespread release nearly five decades after his death, is a collection of stripped-down 4-track tape recordings that show Stepney, alone, playing all the instruments with minimal resources. It is, as Chicago culture historian (and author of the Step on Step liner notes) Ayana Contreras says, "the funk unadulterated," an unprecedented representation of an inspired composer imagining and conceiving music (some of which would eventually become major studio productions) in its primal state.

Step on Step features 23 tracks, most of which are original compositions by Stepney that were never again recorded by him or any other artist. It also includes prototypical demos of Stepney compositions for Earth, Wind & Fire, such as That’s The Way of The World, Imagination, and On Your Face, as well as the original version of Black Gold, which would eventually be recorded by Rotary Connection (as I Am The Black Gold of The Sun, with lyrics by Richard Rudolph). And in addition to the wordless chants of the original and Stepney's first single Daddy’s Diddies, Stepney’s actual voice is heard a couple of times throughout the album, testing mics and inputs on his tape recorder.

All previously unrecorded and unnamed original compositions contained in Step on Step were titled by Stepney’s daughters, Eibur, Charlene, and Chanté Stepney, whose voices are also heard throughout the album, telling stories and sharing memories about their father. The Stepney Sisters, who produced this album over many years, have been committed to efforts to celebrate their father's legacy and put his work in a brighter light. They treasured the tapes left by their father in the basement of their home, transferring the audio on several occasions and originally compiling the recordings for an ultra-limited edition CD under their own DIY label (The Charles Stepney Masters) in the early 2010s. “We were always talking about how we were trying to develop it and we’d get to different people and they’d say ‘what is this raw stuff?’… It was just the first level of something that would become really great,” says Chanté. “To have this intimate view of an artist’s process is truly unheard of and unheard… so I really appreciate the opportunity to give this. I’m so happy for my dad that we get to share this with the world in this way, with this level of respect.”

This new double-LP collection on International Anthem represents "a genuine, beautiful, deeply emotional, and personal effort by three women to reconnect with their father and validate their own memories of his passion and brilliance," says Scott McNiece, co-founder of the label. And it is the fulfillment of a long-awaited promise by Stepney to release a solo album, which he once promised his daughters he would do, and that he would title: Step on Step.