I still have all of my Luther albums,some still on the old vinyl records they used to make and others on CD, and I plan to keep them forever. A “Greatest Hits” album, with recordings by him of his most loved songs, was released posthumously. Many of today’s R&B stars were heavily influenced by his mellow vocal style, including Usher, Brandy, Alicia Keys and Brian McKnight.Ī tribute album was made after Luther Vandross’s death, with several R&B stars performing his most well-known hits. This was a tremendous loss to not only his family, but to his fans and to the music industry. He was never performed again publicly after that and died on Jat the age of 54-years-old. He was nominated a number of times for Grammy Awards and went on to win eight of them It seemed like nothing could stop Luther Vandross from his further ascent to more fame and hits, until April of 2003, when he suffered a massive stroke. He quickly earned a reputation for excellence and, after making a couple of recordings that failed to gather momentum, he made a solo album- “Never Too Much”- in 1981 and his popularity took off like a whirlwind, as he drew a devoted base of fans, mostly females, who bought his albums and attended his concerts in droves. He earned a handsome income writing and singing commercial jingles, then later sang backup for various music artists such as Chaka Khan, Roberta Flack, Diana Ross and Bette Midler. on April 20, 1951, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he started his own singing group while in high school and began college, but dropped out to pursue his career. Vandross was class personified and we knew that, whenever he performed, he was giving us his best.īorn Luther Ronzoni Vandross, Jr. it just didn’t matter as long as he kept singing to us. We loved his music when he was fat and we loved his music when he was thin. My friends and I all have a “Luther” memory, in terms of remembering what we were doing when we hit this song or that one. Women with “old school” musical tastes and their younger peers all liked Luther’s music and you could see as many mamas as daughters swoon at the sound of one his songs. We played Luther’s music for romantic evenings with our significant other, we danced to his songs during our wedding receptions and we marked some of the most special events of our lives, both good and bad, with his voice playing somewhere in the background.
That liquid, velvet voice could make women melt right where they stood and he was most certainly a master balladeer like nobody else.
Luther Vandross was the Pavorotti of R&B vocalists.
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