A Lesson in Listening: Charles Stepney’s Living Legacy

by Carissa Lee

Charles Stepney. Image courtesy of the Stepney family.

“When I tell you to, move the gear shift from one to two,” he said. My nervous teenage fingers tightened around the stick. On his command, I shifted into second gear. The car jolted, then smoothed out. Soon, I was beaming with pride as we cruised the back roads, the windows cracked enough to let the summer in. As was usual with my dad, I heard a dreamy melody oozing from the speakers of his Nissan Z, accompanied by the lyrics:

You will find peace of mind as you look way down in your heart and soul.
Don’t hesitate because the world seems cold—stay young at heart.

That moment—my first driving lesson—has been forever intertwined with the genius of composer and producer Charles Stepney. My 15-year-old self didn’t yet know his name. I just knew the music as the sound of my father’s care.

But now I understand. Charles Stepney’s musical brilliance has been the invisible architecture of my life—present at every pivotal moment, stretching all the way back to the womb. The lullaby my mother sang to me before I could draw breath was “I Can Sing a Rainbow” by the Dells. Later came learning to drive with Earth, Wind & Fire in the background, and, in adulthood, finding catharsis belting out Deniece Williams’s “Free” whenever sorrow crept in.

Stepney’s genius is like the sky in many Black households—so ubiquitous it becomes atmosphere. His arrangements are sewn into the fabric of American music, yet his name remains too often unspoken.

Charles Stepney was a Chicago native, but his roots were in the South: Arkansas, to be exact. I hear the South in every layer of his sound. I hear the gospel croon of his mother—an accomplished pianist, organist, music director, and his first teacher—Willie Stepney. I hear the deep history of his family’s dedication to growth, which proved useful in his work with blues legends, like Muddy Waters, and while the Delta is present in his sound—Chicago is at the forefront. His music carries the weight and wonder of the Great Migration. Stepney’s arrangements, rooted in gospel with classical flare, expressed through the vibraphone, synthesizers, strings, and layered orchestration, helped shape what many call the “Chicago Sound.”

But to me, it’s more than that. It’s the sound of Black resilience, of a people refusing erasure, stretching across cities, states, generations. Stepney was a pioneer, not just because he was among the first to experiment with synthesizers in soul and funk, but because, like his ancestors and so many Black artists today, he never stopped reaching. He incorporated folk and classical stylings into his work. Always leaning toward the next wave of expression, he turned instruments into testimonies. He created a Black American sound. He created an American sound. A sound that has been shared worldwide.

Once he’d established himself in Chicago, Stepney began producing and arranging for Chess Records. Alongside Marshall Chess, he co-created the band Rotary Connection. Which would push sonic boundaries and lay the groundwork for what the music industry coined “psychedelic soul,” but his creativity is at the base of much more than, the often racialized, “soul” category. His musical prowess was and continues to be genre-defying.

He built a lexicon of sound, phrases and motifs that echo through time. His fingerprints are on the bones of pop, soul, and R&B. His work lives on beyond his own discography, chopped into samples, and used in tracks like the Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly,” A Tribe Called Quest’s “Bonita Applebum,” Kanye West’s “Family Business,” and countless others. His music moves through decades like waves on the ocean, evolving, adapting, remaining. And he did all this before the age of 45.

Stepney possessed the kind of compositional fluency often reserved for novelists or poets. He was able to write full arrangements from his mind to staff paper without an instrument in sight. He even composed a three-part concerto for symphony for jazz musician Ramsey Lewis. That gift, however, was not shielded from exploitation. When he died, the industry did what it too often does: claimed his genius as corporate property. The day of his death, record labels he once valued as partners turned pirates and raided his home studio—syphoning what they could of his magic. Meanwhile, in their Los Angeles and New York offices, the monetary percentages he received from record sales and licensing were lowered.

But his daughters, Chante, Charlene, and Eibur—animated by the spirit of optimism and change their father’s music carries—know that his prolific creativity was not driven by ambition alone. It was love. It was the sound of their father’s care, too. They extend that care with Rotary Connection 222, created in collaboration with band leader and bassist Junius Paul.

On July 27, 2025, the latest MCA Music Talk will illuminate Stepney’s legacy through the voices of those who knew him best. His daughters will join Duane Powell, DJ and formally a music historian (and who I consider a modern-day griot) to remember, reflect, and re-sound Stepney’s influence. Powell, a turntablist, and lecturer, treats music as memory work. He holds the vibrations of Black sonic history close, reshaping them and spinning them back into the world. Together, he and the Stepney sisters will speak on their father’s deep care—how it manifested in sound and made its way into every note he touched. They’ll share stories, songs, and spirit, keeping Stepney’s flame not just lit, but roaring. A legacy alive. A legacy morphing, migrating, and moving forward.

Stepney’s music, whether through pop or classical, embodies Black culture—a culture that allows us to keep surviving the end of the world, over and over again; that can remix the hand it’s dealt and come up with something fresh. His sound carries the spirit of reinvention. In this time of rapid and constant change in our world—from climate, and technology, to the geopolitical landscape—his work reminds us of the power of adaptation. It’s a lesson we need now more than ever.

Stepney’s melodies echo in my own memories. In the lessons from my father, the nurturing hold of my mother, and my adult self-care. That’s Charles Stepney’s legacy to me: music as care, care as music. A father’s hand on the wheel. A genius behind the sound.