Luther Vandross

Luther Ronzoni Vandross, singer, songwriter and producer: born New York 20 April 1951; died Edison, New Jersey 1 July 2005.

Over a 30-year career, Luther Vandross went from being a singer of advertising jingles to become a soul balladeer known as the "King of Romance", with sales of over 25 million albums. Vandross's smooth, seductive voice became the template for singers like Alexander O'Neal and Freddie Jackson and is instantly recognisable on recordings like "Never Too Much" and "Give Me the Reason", and on his tour de force rendition of the Burt Bacharach and Hal David composition "A House is Not a Home". Also a consummate songwriter and producer, Vandross won eight Grammy awards and in the Eighties helped to relaunch the career of Aretha Franklin.

Born in 1951, Luther Ronzoni Vandross Jnr grew up in Manhattan in a musical family. As a child, he would fall asleep to the sound of his older sister Patricia rehearsing with the doo-wop group the Crests in the next room. His mother sang in a gospel choir, while his father, who died when Luther was eight, was himself a crooner and a big band vocalist. Ironically for someone who would eventually take over the mantle of Barry White and Marvin Gaye, as a teenager Vandross idolised girl groups such as the Shirelles and female singers like Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross. He explained:

The female voice to me is just special, and women's interpretive values seem less restricted. The peaks and valleys are much wider than what men choose to do - not what men are capable of doing, but what they choose to do. Cissy Houston and the Sweet Inspirations behind Aretha taught me what thick, luscious harmony was all about.

Vandross attended William Howard Taft High school in the Bronx and formed a group called Shades of Jade with the guitarist Carlos Alomar. This evolved into Listen My Brother, a 16-strong theatre ensemble which appeared at the Apollo in Harlem and on the first episode of the children's television show Sesame Street in 1973, with Vandross singing the alphabet. After graduating, he had studied electrical engineering and music at Western Michigan University for a year before returning to New York to look after his mother while working a succession of mundane jobs.

In 1974, Luther finally got a lucky break when his old schoolfriend Carlos Alomar invited him to visit Philadelphia where he was recording with David Bowie. When he heard Vandross ad-libbing harmony lines to "Young Americans" in Sigma Sound Studios, Bowie hired him on the spot to arrange back-up vocals on the song and on the album of the same title. Vandross also contributed the track "Fascination" to the project and joined Bowie's Young Americans tour of 1975.

By then, another of his compositions, "Everybody Rejoice (A Brand New Day)", had been included in the hit musical show The Wiz, the black version of The Wizard of Oz which became a film starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. The Bowie connection helped Vandross secure regular work as backing vocalist with the producer Arif Mardin on recordings by Bette Midler, Ringo Starr, Chaka Khan and Carly Simon.

In 1976, he formed the short-lived vocal group Luther which signed to the Atlantic offshoot Cotillion and issued two albums, Luther and This Close to You, but didn't catch on in the disco era. Naturally gifted and mostly self-taught, Vandross carried on doing sessions for the likes of Quincy Jones, Chic, Sister Sledge and Gregg Diamond's Bionic Boogie (he was the lead vocalist on their 1978 dancefloor filler "Hot Butterfly"). He also developed a lucrative sideline singing advertising jingles for NBC, AT&T, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pepsi-Cola, Seven-Up and even the US Army.

In 1979, Vandross arranged "No More Tears (Enough is Enough)", the transatlantic smash by Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer, and the following year lent his vocal talents to the Italian disco outfit Change which was based in Bologna but occasionally recorded in New York. Vandross cleverly used that unlikely alliance to his advantage. He recalled,

I was making a lot of money as a jingle and background singer. To take me out of that, you had to be talking some mighty stuff. I told them, if I didn't like my performance, I wanted to be able to stand there and erase it myself. And that I wanted my name printed as lead vocalist. Black radio took to back-announcing Luther Vandross with Change and started saying this guy needs to make an album.

The shrewd Vandross finally secured a record deal giving him creative control and in 1981 Epic Records issued his début solo single and album, both called "Never Too Much", and both also produced by Vandross; the album went on to sell a million copies. He opened on tour for Roberta Flack and blew audiences away with his extended take on Bacharach and David's "A House is Not a Home", full of vocal slides and breathy shivers, which remained the pièce de résistance of his live shows for the next 20 years and a staple of American radio.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine Vandross mentioned that he fancied working with Aretha Franklin. Clive Davis, who had signed the Queen of Soul to his Arista label, took him up on the offer. Vandross and his bassist and co-producer Marcus Miller came up with "Jump to It" during a break on the set of the television show Saturday Night Live in 1982. Vandross said,

That recording session was heaven from the time the song was written. "Jump to It" was basically the first take and she loved it and I got to do the whole album.

Vandross was dubbed "the Pavarotti of Pop" by People magazine because of his tenor vocal range. He was now in demand as a writer-producer as much as an artist in his own right, but didn't match the success of his début with the albums that followed: Forever, For Always, For Love (1982) or Busy Body (1983). He worked with Dionne Warwick on How Many Times Can We Say Goodbye (1983), duetting with her on the title track, and hit his stride again with The Night I Fell in Love (1985) and Give Me the Reason (1986), two albums which established him as a headline act in Britain. He finally cracked the UK Top Thirty with "I Really Didn't Mean It" and "Stop to Love", one his personal favourites.

Vandross, veteran of hundreds of backing sessions, had made the transition to centre-stage, but he resented being called the "King of Romance":

It pigeonholes me, it means my uptempo songs get less of an airing and I don't particularly want that. I write and sing about the joys as well as the problems of love. The value of romance, beauty, song and emotion will always, always, always be my priority.

The move into the limelight didn't always suit Vandross. He constantly struggled with his weight and once reached 23¹/2 stone. He would get depressed at the thought of

a failed diet day. If I'm emotionally distraught, then eating is my coping mechanism. I'm the president of the Couch Potato Society but my greatest fear is gaining back the weight that I worked so hard to lose. I was feeling extraordinarily depressed when I wrote "Any Love". It's a song of encouragement, it's trying to tell you to hold it together, in spite of what you deem to be the missing piece in your life.

In 1988, the album Any Love made the Top Ten on both sides of the Atlantic as Vandross toured the US with Anita Baker. The following year, he headlined two shows at Wembley Arena in London and recorded the ballad "Here and Now", which became one of the biggest wedding songs in America and belatedly earned him his first Grammy Award.

Vandross became the duet partner of choice for Nineties divas, recording "The Best Things in Life are Free" with Janet Jackson for the soundtrack of Mo' Money in 1992 and, two years later, duetting with Mariah Carey on a new version of "Endless Love", originally recorded by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross. Still he battled with weight problems and there were even rumours that he had died. "I exercise five days a week, I eat 1,000 calories a day and there ain't nothing wrong with me. I sure sing good for a dead man!" he quipped on stage in 2000.

Four years ago, Luther Vandross signed to J Records, a new label launched by the former head of Arista records Clive Davis, and issued an eponymous 15th album, which sold a million copies in the US alone. In 2002, he triumphed on an eight-date tour of Britain but, the following year, he suffered a stroke four days before his 52nd birthday. He had already completed work on Dance with My Father, which featured guest appearances by Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé Knowles and the rapper Busta Rhymes and was released in June 2003. The album topped the US charts and went on to win four Grammys, including song of the year for the title track co-written by Vandross and Richard Marx.

Pierre Perrone