Luther Vandross

Luther Vandross was an American soul and R&B singer, songwriter, and record producer. Throughout his career, he achieved eleven consecutive RIAA-certified platinum albums and sold over 40 million records worldwide. After a short stint at college and drifting through numerous groups and as a backup singer, in 1974 after a short stay with David Bowie, Luther worked with a vast array of award-winning recording artists including Roberta Flack, Chaka Khan, Ben E. King, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, Cat Stevens, Gary Glitter, Ringo Starr, Sister Sledge, and Donna Summer. Across the next decade, Vandross would top the US R&B charts six more times - so successful was he, and, at times, so large his girth, that he was nicknamed "the Pavarotti of pop". British audiences embraced him in the late 1980s: Never Too Much hit the British top 20 eight years after it was an American hit. At one point, he had three albums simultaneously in the top 100. Vandross's greatest hits of that era - Stop To Love, There's Nothing Better Than Love, Any Love, Here And Now, Power Of Love/Love Power - established him as the most widely admired male soul singer of the post-disco era. Vandross continued to enjoy healthy sales in the early 1990s, but his glacial pop/soul style became increasingly predictable and he was soon overshadowed by a younger, more hip-hop oriented breed of male R&B singer. His last British hit was Endless Love, a duet with Mariah Carey in 1994. All in all, Vandross has been recognized as one of the 200 greatest singers of all time (2023) by Rolling Stone, as well as one of the greatest R&B artists by Billboard. In addition, NPR named him one of the 50 Great Voices. He was the recipient of eight Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year in 2004 for a track recorded not long before his death, "Dance with My Father". In 2021, he was posthumously inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.