Luther Vandross.....RIP

SwayzeSwayze 14,705 Posts
edited July 2005 in Off Topic (NRR)
Just saw this on CNN

Anybody got any info?
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  Comments


  • awallawall 673 Posts
    damn.

  • drewnicedrewnice 5,465 Posts
    Moms has been calling me all evening asking me if this was for real or not.

    Now it's confirmed and very sad to hear.

    R.I.P.

  • awallawall 673 Posts
    i'll be bumping this tonight

  • CosmoCosmo 9,768 Posts
    WHAT?

    Nothing on the web.

  • LaserWolfLaserWolf Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
    damn.

  • GuzzoGuzzo 8,611 Posts
    man, this is truly sad. I really hope this isn't true. This man is a truly great artist and his music is a godsend

  • CosmoCosmo 9,768 Posts
    man, this is truly sad. I really haope this isn't true. This man is a truly great artist and his music is a godsend

    Luther Vandross

    RIP




  • GuzzoGuzzo 8,611 Posts
    i'll be bumping this tonight




    I dare anyone to put this album and not smile.



    I am so serious when I say this mans music was amazing. I truly beleive that good music is music that can evoke an emotion, this man sang with love and joy in his heart and it always showed. I know he had a terrible stroke last year and hopefully he is in a better place now



    Luther Vandross you will be missed

  • djdazedjdaze 3,099 Posts
    wow, this sucks...sooooooo sorry to hear that he passed. He will truly be missed.

    I'll always have memories of listening to his greatest hits album on sunday afternoons when I lived with my friends family while his mom cleaned the house...jammin to Till My Baby Comes Home.

  • awallawall 673 Posts
    i'll be bumping this tonight

    I dare anyone to put this album and not smile.

    I am so serious when I say this mans music was amazing. I truly beleive that good music is music that can evoke an emotion, this man sang with love and joy in his heart and it always showed. I know he had a terrible stroke last year and hopefully he is in a better place now

    Luther Vandross you will be missed

    well said.

  • awallawall 673 Posts
    I'll always have memories of listening to his greatest hits album on sunday afternoons when I lived with my friends family while his mom cleaned the house...jammin to Till My Baby Comes Home.

    i always used to rock doubles of "never too much" at parties to get things poppin

  • hogginthefogghogginthefogg 6,098 Posts
    Rest in peace, Luther.

    I'll be playing "Never Too Much" tomorrow night.

  • CosmoCosmo 9,768 Posts

    i always used to rock doubles of "never too much" at parties to get things poppin

    That song ALWAYS gets the party popping, shit... it did last night.

  • very sad news...

    an early luther classic: change "glow of love"

    rest in peace.

  • SwayzeSwayze 14,705 Posts
    i saw the headline, and before i even thought soulstrut, i thought, "guzzo"... RIP

  • SwayzeSwayze 14,705 Posts
    If anyone checks the tracklist for all his albums, all of his songs (except that Sam Cooke remake song about having a party) talk about love or relationships. I guarantee he'll be recognized as the greatest soul singer of the past 25 years.

  • RaystarRaystar 1,106 Posts
    Cant say it enough, this brother had a hell of a voice and made so many great songs... its really a shame how everything went down with him.

  • DJPrestigeDJPrestige 1,710 Posts
    having a drink for my man luther....(throw your panties on the stage!)

  • pacmanpacman 1,113 Posts
    Definitely a sad day for music lovers everywhere. My parents were shocked. RIP Luther.

  • Big_ChanBig_Chan 5,088 Posts
    i'll be bumping this tonight

    We'll miss you Luther. R.I.P.

  • GuzzoGuzzo 8,611 Posts
    an official report taken from the E! Entertainment website

    Luther Vandross' Swan Song

    by Joal Ryan
    Jul 1, 2005, 3:45 PM PT


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

    The supremely smooth Grammy-winner died Friday at a hospital in New Jersey. He was 54. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

    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. Less than two months later, what would be Vandross' final studio album, the reflective Dance with My Father, was released.

    The album proved to be his most successful, immediately topping the charts and winning four Grammy Awards in 2004, including Song of the Year for the title cut.

    While Vandross regained consciousness, and sufficiently recovered to appear in a taped message at the 2004 Grammys and on The Oprah Winfrey Show later that same year, 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."

    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." In all, Vandross won eight Grammys and sold more than 25 million albums.

    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 around the time of the album's release. "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 debuted during an April 2003 episode of Fox's Boston Public. American Idol alum Tamyra Gray handled the singing honors. Vandross himself was to have graced the Idol stage in 2003 as a guest judge, but then the stroke struck.

    To the end, his mother held out hope for his full 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 in 2003. "He is going to recover and when he does, I want him to be greeted with a big success story. "

    Vandross was remembered in the 2004 tribute album, Forever, for Always, for Luther, featuring the work of jazz artists such as George Benson. A new, R&B-style tribute album was announced just last month. Carey, Celine Dion and former Idol champs Fantasia and Ruben Studdard were among those scheduled to contribute tracks.

    "Remember, when I say goodbye it's never for long," Vandross said during his videotaped appearance at the 2004 Grammys. "Because"--he continued, slipping into one of his trademark tunes--"I believe in the power of love."

  • djdazedjdaze 3,099 Posts
    My sureshot slowjam tapes back in the 90's always started with "A House Is Not A Home"...and they always will

  • VitaminVitamin 631 Posts
    i'll be bumping this tonight

    I dare anyone to put this album and not smile.

    I am so serious when I say this mans music was amazing. I truly beleive that good music is music that can evoke an emotion, this man sang with love and joy in his heart and it always showed. I know he had a terrible stroke last year and hopefully he is in a better place now

    Luther Vandross you will be missed

    Cosign. I love Sugar and Spice off of that. What a shame.

  • Rest In Peace

    Never Too Much

  • Phill_MostPhill_Most 4,594 Posts
    I'm rockin' this one tonight. Title track. We just lost one of the greatest voices ever, y'all. R.I.P.

  • volumenvolumen 2,532 Posts
    Just sucks! All these cats are going too young. I know he had a stroke a couple years ago, so maybe it was a big one that he never fully recovered from????

  • sad news, but thank god for this post. i have to DJ a wedding tomorrow and it hadn't occurred to me to put any Luther in the crates. i think the groom's relatives might have ripped me limb from limb.

  • edpowersedpowers 4,437 Posts
    this is really sad..."dont you know that" is my song of choice for the evening

  • Young_PhonicsYoung_Phonics 8,039 Posts
    Imma play that Charme "Georgy Porgy" cover that Luther did the vocals on. Man just like night I was bumping the self-titled Chic LP and read that Luth' did the vocals on that as well.

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    ICON.....Simple and plain.
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