Its former members went on to become parts of the groups Kleer and Chic.
They made two albums for Atlantic in 1976, but neither was successful, and Luther soon disbanded. Through Bowie, Vandross met many influential figures in the music industry and was soon doing session work with top performers.Įncouraged by his success, Vandross and some other singers formed their own group, Luther. He also used a Vandross composition, “Fascination, ” on the album, and took the singer along as part of his backup chorus when he went on tour. He hired Vandross to sing and arrange backup vocals on Young Americans. Bowie, standing unnoticed nearby, was impressed with what he heard. While listening to the studio tape, Vandross began singing his ideas for the chorus to Alomar. He took Vandross to the recording studio where Bowie ’s Young Americans was being made. A childhood friend, Carlos Alomar, had become the guitarist for David Bowie.
LUTHER VANDROSS SONGS IN 1987 PROFESSIONAL
Nineteen seventy-four was the year Vandross really made his break into professional music. Pay the rent on his first apartment, but he continued to work a variety of non-musical jobs as well. Box 1570, Ansonia Station, 1990 Broadway, New York, NY 10023. Worked as backup singer, songwriter, and arranger on recordings by numerous artists, including Chaka Khan, Carly Simon, Quincy Jones, and Roberta Flack, 1974 - member of group Luther, 1976 singer of commercial jingles, beginning in mid-1970s solo performer, 1981 - record producer, 1981 -.Īwards: Received Grammy Award nominations for best new artist and best male rhythm and blues vocalist, 1981.Īddresses: Office - c/o Epic Records, CBS, Inc., 51 West 52nd St., New York, NY 10019. Education: Attended Western Michigan University, c. The royalties helped him For the Record …īorn April 20, 1951, in New York, N.Y. In 1972 a song he wrote, “Everybody Rejoice (Brand New Day) ” was selected for use in the Broadway musical The Wiz. After graduating from Taft High School, Vandross enrolled at Western Michigan University, but after an unsuccessful year there he returned to New York to concentrate on a musical career. By the age of sixteen, however, he had become confident enough to audition for and win a place in a sixteen-member vocal group, Listen My Brother, managed by the owners of the famous Apollo Theater. ” Yet Vandross, whose natural shyness was compounded by a serious weight problem, was so self-conscious that he could not bring himself to sing aloud around his family. I wanted to do to somebody what she did to me. That ’s when I made the decision to sing. She knocked me down with that tone quality. A pivotal event in his young life was his 1963 attendance of a Dionne Warwick concert at the Brooklyn Fox Theatre. “I acknowledge what Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, Tony Bennett and all the fabulous male singers did, but that ’s not what aroused my artistic libido, ” he stated in Jet. The great black women singers, not the men, inspired him to sing, Vandross insists. He immersed himself in the music of Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, the Supr êmes and other black groups of the time, becoming so wrapped up in their world that when Ross left the Supr êmes his grade average dropped from a B+ to a C. ” “My sister was too young to go out to rehearsals, so the group would work out in our living room, ” Vandross recalled in Ebony. He was surrounded by music from birth his mother, a widow, sent her son to piano lessons when he was only three years old, and his eldest sister was a member of The Crests, a doo-wop group best remembered for the song “Sixteen Candles. Smith public housing project on New York City ’s lower East Side. “Some people are tired of letting it all hang out, and Vandross ’s lyrics speak to a special romantic need, ” wrote Orde Coombs in New York. ” It is also attributable to his preference for unabashedly romantic love songs in an era of sexually explicit lyrics. His solo appeal is due in part to his rich tenor and superb stylings, which, Richard Harrington declared in the Washington Post, put Vandross “in the pantheon of classic soul singers that stretches from Ray Charles and Sam Cooke to Al Green. For several years, he had been contributing his talents as a backup singer, songwriter, and arranger to albums by the likes of Chaka Khan, Carly Simon, Quincy Jones, and Roberta Flack.
Luthur Vandross was well-known and respected among professional musicians long before he debuted as a solo star in 1981 with the hit album Never 7oo Much. Singer, songwriter, producer, and arranger