You're listening to Nakedly Examined Music, a podcast about songs and songwriters.

My name is Mark Lintonmeyer.

My guest for episode 231 is Bill Champlin.

He started playing professionally in Northern California in 1965, founding Sons of Champlin,

who put out eight albums of funky, often intricate tunes between

1969 and 1977.

He then went solo moving to L.A., where he quickly became a highly sought-after award-winning

studio background vocalist and released two solo albums.

During this period, he also co-wrote two Grammy-winning singles. First, Earth, Wind, and Fires

after the Love Has Gone, 1979, and then George Benson's Turn Your Love Around, 1981. Another

co-writer for the first of these was producer David Foster, who was starting to work with the band

Chicago. And if you recognize Bill's voice, it is probably from that period. He was in the band

through their hit

making Chicago 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, passing from 1981 all the way through 2009, you're right

now hearing, please hold on, a track from their biggest seller, 1984's Chicago 17.

He had five solo releases during the first half of the 1990s, and since leaving Chicago, he

has released three more solo albums, one of those of the 1990s, and since leaving Chicago, he has released three

more solo albums, one of those under the name Wonderground. He reformed the Sons of Champlain

and has had a new studio album and a live album with them. He's released three albums with

Champlin Williams Freestead, the Williams being Joseph Williams, son of composer John Williams,

current lead singer of Toto, and has otherwise

continued to collaborate heavily. In particular with his wife Tamara Champlin, a great singer-songwriter

...