Rest In Peace Luther

[Emerald City]

Even though it's been a few days since his passing, I feel something should still be posted on him over here....

Luther Vandross' Swan Song

07/01/2005 6:03 PM, E! Online
Joal Ryan


Luther Vandross wasn't just a singer. He was a wedding day. A radio-show song dedication. A makeout session.

Vandross, whose smooth voice earned him eight Grammys and helped him sell more than 25 million records through a three-decade solo career, died Friday at a hospital in New Jersey. He was 54.

Vandross, whose hits included the romantic renderings "Power of Love/Love Power," "Here and Now" and "Always and Forever," was felled by stroke on April 16, 2003 at his Manhattan apartment. Fewer than two months later, what would be Vandross' final studio album, the reflective Dance with My Father, was released.

While Vandross subsequently regained conciousness, and sufficiently recovered to appear in a taped message at the 2004 Grammys, at which Dance with My Father earned four Grammys, he never resumed his recording or performing career.

In a heartbreaking statement to the Associated Press in May 2003, the entertainer's mother, Mary Vandross, said she was banking on her son to rebound. "He has to recover, he's all I have left," Mary Vandross said. "He's my last surviving child."

In a 2001 interview, Luther Vandross, who'd long battled obesity, diabetes and hypertension, said his father, brother, nephew, maternal grandfather, paternal grandfather had all succumbed to diabetes.

Luther Ronzoni Vandross, his middle name cribbed from a pasta label, was born April 20, 1951, in New York City.

The future R&B crooner got his start in gospel. As a teenager, he played Harlem's famed Apollo Theatre with the gospel-soul group, Listen My Brother.

At the age of 20, his career moved downtown to Broadway, where his composition, "Everybody Rejoice (A Brand New Day)," was featured in the hit musical The Wiz.

The young Vandross went on to pay the bills as a commercial jingle writer and backup vocalist for the likes of Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand and David Bowie.

Vandross scored the Bowie gig through an old school friend. At the time, the English rocker was working on his landmark 1975 album, Young Americans. Hired as a singer, Vandross ended up arranging the vocal parts and cowriting the song, "Fascination."

[Emerald City]

The following year, Vandross moved from the background to the foreground with the disco group, Luther. To the relief of wedding deejays, Vandross' bout with Saturday Night Fever was brief. Luther, the group, was a bust. Vandross, the sultry R&B star, was about to be born.

His breakthrough--more than 10 years in the making--came with the 1981 solo debut, Never Too Much. The seven-track collection included the hit title track and a cover of a Burt Bacharach standard he made his own, "A House Is Not a Home."

The platinum-selling album was a career-definer. No more would Vandross ping-pong from Broadway to Bowie. He was, always and forever, the standard-bearer of the smooth love song.

"[My style is] not 'Meet me in the shower' and 'Let's rub oil on each other,'" he once said in an interview. "You'll never hear me sing about those things."

Vandross' more understated style brought him the 1990 Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for "Here and Now." He repeated in that category in 1991 for "Power of Love," and in 1996 for "Your Secret Love."

If his career held steady, Vandross' health did not. By his own admission, he was a carb addict who lost, and gained, more than 100 pounds 14 times--often in the very public eye. As recently as 1998, the six-foot-three singer weighed in at 340 pounds.

"[When you're that heavy it] feels like you're wearing an 80-pound hat and a coat that weighs 300 pounds," Vandross told ABC News in 2001, during one of his slender, 220-pound periods. "...You wear it externally, so the minute you walk through the door, everybody knows, 'Luther's not winning his battle with his demon.'"

"An alcoholic can't have half a martini," he said, "and you know, I can't have bread."

Fortunately, Vandross always had song--and admirers. Mariah Carey dueted with him on "Endless Love," off his 1994 cover-tune collection Songs. Whitney Houston recorded his "Who Do You Love," for her 1990 album I'm Your Baby Tonight. Foxy Brown, Busta Rhymes and Queen Latifah contributed to Dance with my Father. His duet with Beyonce from that collection, "The Closer I Get to You," earned the Grammy for Best R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals.

Vandross called Dance with my Father a personal album; the title track "the best song he ever wrote," according to his mother.

"When I heard it, I felt like I was going to, well, scream," Mary Vandross said in a statement. "I played it over and over and I cried and cried. I was amazed how well Luther remembered his father, how we used to dance and sing in the house. I was so surprised that at 7-and-a-half years of age, he could remember what a happy household we had. It was always filled with a lot of music."

The song made its prime-time debut in an April 2003 episode of Fox's Boston Public. American Idol alum Tamyra Gray handled the singing honors. Vandross was to have graced the Idol stage himself in 2003, but his guest judge stint was canceled in the wake of the stroke.

To the end, his mother held out hope for his recovery.

"Knowing how he loves this new album, I believe Luther would want it to come out now and I'm so grateful that he can get this chance," she said. "He is going to recover and when he does, I want him to be greeted with a big success story. "

[Emerald City]

Simply one of a kind :thankyou:

Rest In Peace Mr Vandross :angelwings:

[Diamond Girl]

Rest Peacefully, Luther V. :angelwings:
Your voice and talents will live on :iwannasing:

:RIP:

[Motown Honey]

Farewell, Lutha :sniffling:

The pain is no longer, may peace find your soul

:angelwings: :RIP: :sweetsorry: