Fred White, who performed drums for the era-defining and genre-defying band Earth, Wind & Fire, has died on the age of 67, his brother and the band introduced on social media.

“Our family is saddened today with the loss of an amazing and talented family member, our beloved brother Frederick Eugene ‘Freddie’ White,” wrote his brother and bandmate Verdine White on Instagram on Sunday. No reason behind loss of life has but been launched.

Fred White was born in 1955 in Chicago right into a household of musicians, together with older brothers Verdine and Maurice White. He confirmed expertise on the drums early in life — a “child protégé,” his brother Verdine mentioned — and at the same time as a young person discovered success taking part in drums in Chicago for acts together with Donny Hathaway.

“At home and beyond he was the wonderful bro that was always entertaining and delightfully mischievous,” his brother wrote. “We could always count on him to make a seemingly bad situation more light hearted.”

In 1970, Maurice moved to Los Angeles and based Earth, Wind & Fire, and Verdine joined a couple of months later.

A number of years later, they coaxed their youthful brother to affix the group as a major drummer.

Fred White went on to play the drums for the funk-soul-disco-R&B-fusion band in its heyday via the mid-Eighties, together with on all six albums in Earth, Wind & Fire’s outstanding run of consecutive prime 10 information on the Billboard pop chart.

His tight and energetic beats made up the spine of hits like “Shining Star,” “Let’s Groove” and – in fact – the enduring mega-hit “September,” which hit No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 when it was launched and has practically 1.2 billion streams on Spotify.

Fred White left the band within the mid-Eighties, although he continued to carry out with different teams through the years. In 2000, Earth Wind & Fire was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, together with Fred as a member.