Luther Vandross RIP

Luther Vandross: C/D, S/D (mine own)
Luther Vandross: Classic or Dud?
The Unfamous Luther Vandross
Luther Vandross "Never Too Much" Classic or Dud?
In what songs did Luther Vandross use the Kurtweil K2000 Keyboard. (no new answers)

http://www.consumptionjunction.com/i/news/anatomy-of-a-hamdog.jpg

R&B Crooner Luther Vandross Dies at 54

While working at Dunkin Donuts on Carnaby St. in London, Luther called up (well, someone called for Luther) and ordered 3 dozen donuts. I thought they were for the whole band to be shared backstage but they were delivered to his hotel room before noon. 3 dozen! 2 individual sugary rings filled me up but 3 dozen!!! Can't be good for you.

etiher way, RIP Luther, may heaven have a fresh batch waiting for you.

And he really knew how to work a room on his own. Rest in peace.

????

RIP Luther. I don't know your music as well as I would like, but your voice was simply amazing.

Could someone explain to the person who wrote that AP piece that "deep-voiced tenor" is an oxymoron?

????

dan alex made a comment on another thred about loving some cheesy luther song from some movie - and loving luther.

A Seducer in Song, No Lechery Required
By KELEFA SANNEH

When Luther Vandross died on Friday, having never fully recovered from a stroke he suffered in 2003, he was remembered fondly and unanimously. Artists, friends and fans paid tribute to one of the era's great crooners; Patti LaBelle summed up the mood when she told MTV, "He was one of the greatest voices that ever sang a song."

No one who has heard Mr. Vandross glide through "A House Is Not a Home," his career-defining 1981 ballad, will be inclined to argue with that assessment. But as the accolades roll in, it's worth remembering that when he was alive Mr. Vandross was a more vexing figure, sometimes viewed with suspicion by critics and listeners who were ambivalent about (or hostile to) the era he represented: an era in which 1970's soul had given way to 1980's R&B.

In his 1988 book, "The Death of Rhythm & Blues," the critic Nelson George saves Mr. Vandross for the final chapter, "Assimilation Triumphs, Retronuevo Rises (1980-87)." Although he doesn't slight Mr. Vandross's voice or music, Mr. George links his success to the decline of the black music industry. He notes that Mr. Vandross "put out albums without the aid of black retailers," and counts him (alongside Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Prince and others) among the early-80's black pop stars who "relied on white figures for guidance."

Last month, the cultural critic Mark Anthony Neal wrote the first in a series of articles about "The Slow Decline of R&B" (published online at www.popmatters.com), in which he suggested that Mr. Vandross helped move R&B away from its roots: "By coyly distancing himself from the black gospel vocal tradition, which grounded so much of the soul music of the 1960's and 1970's, Vandross cemented his appeal as the quintessential R&B singer."

There's an underlying suggestion in these appraisals that Mr. Vandross was somehow too smooth for his own good and that he was too eager to leave black musical traditions behind. And yet Mr. Vandross himself spoke bitterly about his failure to become a mainstream pop star; even when he was collaborating with David Bowie, he remained throughout his marvelous career a "quintessential R&B singer," and he helped generations of singers and listeners understand that the title wasn't faint praise.

While Mr. Vandross's grittier soul-man predecessors used vocal quirks - a rasp, a shout, a roar - to assert their presence as singers and as seducers, Mr. Vandross wasn't nearly as pushy: his voice was so silky you could almost forget that it came from a real person. Not coincidentally, Mr. Vandross (who struggled with his weight throughout his life) was never a conventional heartthrob; he was a lifelong bachelor whose fanatical female fans swooned more for the songs than for the singer.

For Ms. LaBelle and lots of other fans, Mr. Vandross was first and foremost a disembodied voice, which is part of the reason he remains the gold standard in make-out music: you can bring him into your bedroom without worrying that he'll steal the show. And that's part of the reason so many of his best songs had an undercurrent of melancholy. For a disembodied voice, love is always unconsummated; even his most passionate songs were somehow untainted by lechery.

All of this could have conspired to make Mr. Vandross irrelevant in our current, lechery-obsessed era. R&B's current king, R. Kelly, thrills fans by reminding them of his body and what it wants; you invite him into your bedroom at your peril (which is part of the fun). And yet Mr. Vandross was surprisingly versatile: he sounded equally comfortable over a disco beat or a hip-hop track, as he proved on his great, self-titled 2001 album, as well as the sometimes-great 2003 follow-up, "Dance With My Father," which included collaborations with Busta Rhymes and Beyoncé.

But the best of all the recent Luther Vandross songs wasn't really a Luther Vandross song at all. It was "Slow Jamz," a collaboration between Kanye West, Twista and Jamie Foxx. The song was built around a snippet of one of Mr. Vandross's ad-libs from the end of "A House Is Not a Home." It's a quick little vocal run - "Are you gonna be/ Say you're gonna be/ Are you gonna be/ Say you're gonna be/ Are you gonna be/ Say you're gonna be/ Well, well; well, well" - but Mr. West made it faster to emphasize the syncopation, slyly speeding up a slow-jam specialist.

The lyrics pay tribute to the history of make-out music, with Mr. Vandross as Exhibit A. For listeners who still don't know how a Luther-enhanced seduction is supposed to work, Mr. West sums it up: "I'm-a play this Vandross/ You gon' take your pants off." This was, in its own shameless way, yet another classic Luther Vandross moment, and by no means the last. The man himself was missing, but his warm, achy voice seemed closer than ever.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

actually, that was mentioned upthread.

YOU GUYS. THIS IS A FUCKING MASTER AT WORK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu2JBMNBbKo

check out how proud Dionne is!

Damn right.

man that is the best music

I adore this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc7mfAsNao4

this video, w/ luther chroma key'd into scenes from ruthless people, is something else

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtIhcbR7COw

such a deathless song tho

The chorus is a blast of perfectly calibrated torment.

i don't hear any torment.

wait, lol, wrong thread! yes, torment!