^ So he must've gotten sick right afterwards, which is understandable.

Anyway I always loved their relationship. I know for two people to be around each other for 50 years as they were growing up together in New York City that they always had a deep friendship that helped to make their marriage survive any odd. I'm sure they had their difficult years and there was rumors they had an open marriage (like Ossie & Ruby) but I think their loyalty is a reason they stayed married for 37 years and they should be as commended for that as they were in creating three seminal soundtracks to three generations of audiences.

TD3 said:

Didn't even know Mr. Ashford was sick. wow.

R.I.P.

Tavis Smiley Ashford and Simpson: Thursday, 7/30

Link: Interview: Tavis Smiley

That link says its unauthorised now. Right after the first few minutes. I guess the estate is taking over now.

The absolute fave

Thanks again Timmy

R.I.P.

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

funkpill said:

The absolute fave

Thanks again Timmy

No prob!

RIP

Yeah saw it on the news this morning. So sad. I didn't know he had throat cancer. Poor guy.

for his family. Terrible loss.

SoulAlive said:

4 REAL, Soul.

I'll be playing my "Street Opera" CD tonight. That was the one which really stirred sumpthin' in me as a teenager. God bless Valerie, their children and their family in this sad time. I just caught it on World News Tonight. A&S are exemplary in that their music and their love for one another has spanned decades. xo

My heart is sad, but my ears and my feet got all kinds o'happy because of u, Nick. R.I.P. and God bless Miss Valerie and the girls. xo

[Edited 8/23/11 17:17pm]

[img:$uid]http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x88/tgrJams/ThomaswithAshfordSimpson.jpg[/img:$uid]

Me and Ashford & Simpson at the Grammys in Feb.'08. He was very nice, very gracious and very friendly. His eyes were so green, they threw me! He'll be missed. RIP Nick, God Bless.

June7 said:

[img:$uid]http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x88/tgrJams/ThomaswithAshfordSimpson.jpg[/img:$uid]

Me and Ashford & Simpson at the Grammys in Feb.'08. He was very nice, very gracious and very friendly. His eyes were so green, they threw me! He'll be missed. RIP Nick, God Bless.

I liked his natural brown eyes better. He was tall dark and handsome.

I just learned something I never knew about Nick Ashford.... he was raised in my area.... Ypsilanti, Michigan and graduated from Willow Run High School.

I never read that he had any Michigan ties. I guess it makes sense since he wrote for Motown Records.

I was floored seeing this run across the screen watching the news this morning

before leaving for work. I will buy a greatest hits cd sometimes this weekend

in honor of one of the greatest songwriters of our time. R.I.P Nick and much

love to Valerie Simpson and family.

...

Rip, Nick.....

...

TD3 said:

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

That link says its unauthorised now. Right after the first few minutes. I guess the estate is taking over now.

It was doing that when I've watched it before; if you allow it to keep going you should be able to view it. Yeah, I just played it through... no problem. I'mm not sure what gives KCool with your issue. ================================= [Edited 8/23/11 15:01pm]

Thx! with patience saw the whole thing.............

Broke out the Is It Still Good To Ya album from '78 and nostalgic memories started creeping back. Every Saturday afternoon, while mom and I were cleaning around the house, the sweet sounds and intimacy of this album ran circles in the house. Such a classic album. Nick, we will miss you dearly! R.I.P.

There is a song off one of their cds, that I was obsessed with when I was 10. I would play that song over and over, would rush home from school to play it. I have no idea what the name of the song was, I just know it was not one of their hits. I so wish I knew the name of it-I might recognize the cd cover, though.

My condolences to Valerie and the girls.

Happy Endings

Rest In Peace Nick.. Thank you for being a part of the soundtrack of my life.

Steven Ivory: Nick Ashford is Not Gone

*It’s been widely reported that Nick Ashford, one half of the legendary songwriting team Ashford and (Valerie) Simpson, passed away on August 22, 2011.

It is true that on this date Ashford’s spirit discarded its physical form of some 70 years, throat cancer being the listed cause of the body’s demise.

However, Nick Ashford is not gone. He achieved the amazing feat of immortality decades ago, the day he and his wife and creative partner, Valerie Simpson, began writing pop songs. Chances are not a day will go by when you won’t hear Ashford’s spirit speak to you. Whenever you hear the classics “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing” and “You’re All I Need To Get By,” whether performed by the duo of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell or covered by a multitude of other performers, you’re hearing Nick Ashford.

That version of “California Soul” by Marlena Shaw you hear on TV shows, commercials and movies? That’s Nick Ashford. The song gets more airplay today than when it was originally released as a single by The 5th Dimension in 1968 (Shaw recorded it a year later in ’69).

As a person, Nick Ashford, born in Fairfield, South Carolina–he met Simpson in Harlem in 1963–was the sweetest spirit. Soft spoken, humble and quick to laugh, you’d never know he and Valerie wrote some of the most enduring songs of all time, their tunes having been recorded by artists as disparate as Ray Charles (“Let’s Go Get Stoned,” “I Don’t Need No Doctor,” the latter covered by rock bands Humble Pie, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Styx and more recently, guitarist John Mayer); Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Gladys Knight and the Pips and Teddy Pendergrass, among many others.

Interviewing Nick and Val was always a pleasure, for no matter how many times they sat with me, they treated our talks as if they enjoyed it as much as I did.

It was often assumed that Nick wrote the music and Valerie supplied the lyrics to their songs. But while their creative roles often overlapped, it was Valerie, a monster pianist, composer and arranger, who usually wrote the music, leaving her sensitive, compassionate husband to write the words.

If you ever met Nick, you’d know how natural it was for the words to “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand),” a signature song for Diana Ross, to come out of him. And he was intuitive enough to co-write the anthem, “I’m Every Woman.”

That song was a hit for Chaka in 1978 (and later a smash for Whitney Houston), the same year Ashford and Simpson worked with her on the Quincy Jones track, “Stuff Like That.” I was lucky enough to be at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, hanging out with my partner in crime, photographer Bobby Holland, the night Quincy produced the song. Nick and Valerie were writing the lyrics right there on the spot in the vocal booth as we all waited for Chaka to arrive to sing the lead. She was late, but worth the wait. Chaka, Ashford and Simpson recorded what you hear on that single essentially in one take.

So successful were Ashford and Simpson as songwriters/producers that their careers as a singing/performing duo seemed like a side job. In the ’70s I saw Ashford and Simpson’s soulful live set so many times that I knew the act. Theirs was a show so dynamic and impassioned that core fans wonder why it took the pop public so long to discover them as artists, which they finally did with the hit single “Solid,” in 1984.

How do you say Nick Ashford without Valerie Simpson? Or Val without Nick? The two were one entity occupying two bodies. They were soul mates, literally: mates who shared their soul with all who cared to listen, which happened to be the whole world.

And now Nick Ashford has left his body. But he is not gone.

you can download a ashford & simpson mix from

DJ Jaycee of V-103 (ATL, Ludacris, The Aphilliates) on his facebook page

zhare said:

Steven Ivory: Nick Ashford is Not Gone

*It’s been widely reported that Nick Ashford, one half of the legendary songwriting team Ashford and (Valerie) Simpson, passed away on August 22, 2011.

It is true that on this date Ashford’s spirit discarded its physical form of some 70 years, throat cancer being the listed cause of the body’s demise.

However, Nick Ashford is not gone. He achieved the amazing feat of immortality decades ago, the day he and his wife and creative partner, Valerie Simpson, began writing pop songs. Chances are not a day will go by when you won’t hear Ashford’s spirit speak to you. Whenever you hear the classics “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing” and “You’re All I Need To Get By,” whether performed by the duo of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell or covered by a multitude of other performers, you’re hearing Nick Ashford.

That version of “California Soul” by Marlena Shaw you hear on TV shows, commercials and movies? That’s Nick Ashford. The song gets more airplay today than when it was originally released as a single by The 5th Dimension in 1968 (Shaw recorded it a year later in ’69).

As a person, Nick Ashford, born in Fairfield, South Carolina–he met Simpson in Harlem in 1963–was the sweetest spirit. Soft spoken, humble and quick to laugh, you’d never know he and Valerie wrote some of the most enduring songs of all time, their tunes having been recorded by artists as disparate as Ray Charles (“Let’s Go Get Stoned,” “I Don’t Need No Doctor,” the latter covered by rock bands Humble Pie, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Styx and more recently, guitarist John Mayer); Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Gladys Knight and the Pips and Teddy Pendergrass, among many others.

Interviewing Nick and Val was always a pleasure, for no matter how many times they sat with me, they treated our talks as if they enjoyed it as much as I did.

It was often assumed that Nick wrote the music and Valerie supplied the lyrics to their songs. But while their creative roles often overlapped, it was Valerie, a monster pianist, composer and arranger, who usually wrote the music, leaving her sensitive, compassionate husband to write the words.

If you ever met Nick, you’d know how natural it was for the words to “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand),” a signature song for Diana Ross, to come out of him. And he was intuitive enough to co-write the anthem, “I’m Every Woman.”

That song was a hit for Chaka in 1978 (and later a smash for Whitney Houston), the same year Ashford and Simpson worked with her on the Quincy Jones track, “Stuff Like That.” I was lucky enough to be at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, hanging out with my partner in crime, photographer Bobby Holland, the night Quincy produced the song. Nick and Valerie were writing the lyrics right there on the spot in the vocal booth as we all waited for Chaka to arrive to sing the lead. She was late, but worth the wait. Chaka, Ashford and Simpson recorded what you hear on that single essentially in one take.

So successful were Ashford and Simpson as songwriters/producers that their careers as a singing/performing duo seemed like a side job. In the ’70s I saw Ashford and Simpson’s soulful live set so many times that I knew the act. Theirs was a show so dynamic and impassioned that core fans wonder why it took the pop public so long to discover them as artists, which they finally did with the hit single “Solid,” in 1984.

How do you say Nick Ashford without Valerie Simpson? Or Val without Nick? The two were one entity occupying two bodies. They were soul mates, literally: mates who shared their soul with all who cared to listen, which happened to be the whole world.

And now Nick Ashford has left his body. But he is not gone.

What a good article! Steve Ivory he is one of my favorite correspondent/reporters.

zhare said:

Steven Ivory: Nick Ashford is Not Gone

*It’s been widely reported that Nick Ashford, one half of the legendary songwriting team Ashford and (Valerie) Simpson, passed away on August 22, 2011.

It is true that on this date Ashford’s spirit discarded its physical form of some 70 years, throat cancer being the listed cause of the body’s demise.

However, Nick Ashford is not gone. He achieved the amazing feat of immortality decades ago, the day he and his wife and creative partner, Valerie Simpson, began writing pop songs. Chances are not a day will go by when you won’t hear Ashford’s spirit speak to you. Whenever you hear the classics “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing” and “You’re All I Need To Get By,” whether performed by the duo of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell or covered by a multitude of other performers, you’re hearing Nick Ashford.

That version of “California Soul” by Marlena Shaw you hear on TV shows, commercials and movies? That’s Nick Ashford. The song gets more airplay today than when it was originally released as a single by The 5th Dimension in 1968 (Shaw recorded it a year later in ’69).

As a person, Nick Ashford, born in Fairfield, South Carolina–he met Simpson in Harlem in 1963–was the sweetest spirit. Soft spoken, humble and quick to laugh, you’d never know he and Valerie wrote some of the most enduring songs of all time, their tunes having been recorded by artists as disparate as Ray Charles (“Let’s Go Get Stoned,” “I Don’t Need No Doctor,” the latter covered by rock bands Humble Pie, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Styx and more recently, guitarist John Mayer); Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Gladys Knight and the Pips and Teddy Pendergrass, among many others.

Interviewing Nick and Val was always a pleasure, for no matter how many times they sat with me, they treated our talks as if they enjoyed it as much as I did.

It was often assumed that Nick wrote the music and Valerie supplied the lyrics to their songs. But while their creative roles often overlapped, it was Valerie, a monster pianist, composer and arranger, who usually wrote the music, leaving her sensitive, compassionate husband to write the words.

If you ever met Nick, you’d know how natural it was for the words to “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand),” a signature song for Diana Ross, to come out of him. And he was intuitive enough to co-write the anthem, “I’m Every Woman.”

That song was a hit for Chaka in 1978 (and later a smash for Whitney Houston), the same year Ashford and Simpson worked with her on the Quincy Jones track, “Stuff Like That.” I was lucky enough to be at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, hanging out with my partner in crime, photographer Bobby Holland, the night Quincy produced the song. Nick and Valerie were writing the lyrics right there on the spot in the vocal booth as we all waited for Chaka to arrive to sing the lead. She was late, but worth the wait. Chaka, Ashford and Simpson recorded what you hear on that single essentially in one take.

So successful were Ashford and Simpson as songwriters/producers that their careers as a singing/performing duo seemed like a side job. In the ’70s I saw Ashford and Simpson’s soulful live set so many times that I knew the act. Theirs was a show so dynamic and impassioned that core fans wonder why it took the pop public so long to discover them as artists, which they finally did with the hit single “Solid,” in 1984.

How do you say Nick Ashford without Valerie Simpson? Or Val without Nick? The two were one entity occupying two bodies. They were soul mates, literally: mates who shared their soul with all who cared to listen, which happened to be the whole world.

And now Nick Ashford has left his body. But he is not gone.

darkstranger521 said:

Man, who else was an indispensable part of Motown AND an indispensable part of disco?? I am not too sad though; the man had a HELL of a great life. The REAL tragedy here IMO, as someone mentioned, is that there is NOBODY coming behind any of these greats as they pass along. A whole bunch of NOBODYs. With the death of each Nick Ashford or Teena Marie or Michael Jackson or James Brown or Barry White, we are experiencing in a painful, visceral way NOT ONLY the the death of truly incredible artists, NOT ONLY the death of one of the greatest explosions of culture the world has EVER KNOWN - but in a very real sense the death of our collective AND individual identities, at least for Americans anyway, Americans born and raised during the period after World War II up to the early 70s. These artists represent who WE ARE. Their work DEFINES US and OUR PLACE in the world. In the final analysis, THIS is what is so painful for the public when we lose a Nick Ashford. From the early 50s to about the mid-90s, the rock and soul and hip-hop movement which came from America has shaken up the entire planet. The rock and soul and hip-hop movement, and all that umbrella covered, was AMERICA PERSONIFIED, it was the SOUND of FREEDOM RINGING. There had been NOTHING LIKE IT before, and there will be nothing like it EVER AGAIN. RIP Nick Ashford. Thank you for your Motown records and particularly "It Seems to Hang On" and thank you for your contribution to disco, one of the greatest things to ever come out of America, and a cornerstone of my childhood.

I know it breaks my heart that all of the greats will pass away (as we all will) and real music will no longer exist. I hate to think of Prince or Stevie or Smokey passing away

Marlena58 said:

darkstranger521 said:

Man, who else was an indispensable part of Motown AND an indispensable part of disco?? I am not too sad though; the man had a HELL of a great life. The REAL tragedy here IMO, as someone mentioned, is that there is NOBODY coming behind any of these greats as they pass along. A whole bunch of NOBODYs. With the death of each Nick Ashford or Teena Marie or Michael Jackson or James Brown or Barry White, we are experiencing in a painful, visceral way NOT ONLY the the death of truly incredible artists, NOT ONLY the death of one of the greatest explosions of culture the world has EVER KNOWN - but in a very real sense the death of our collective AND individual identities, at least for Americans anyway, Americans born and raised during the period after World War II up to the early 70s. These artists represent who WE ARE. Their work DEFINES US and OUR PLACE in the world. In the final analysis, THIS is what is so painful for the public when we lose a Nick Ashford. From the early 50s to about the mid-90s, the rock and soul and hip-hop movement which came from America has shaken up the entire planet. The rock and soul and hip-hop movement, and all that umbrella covered, was AMERICA PERSONIFIED, it was the SOUND of FREEDOM RINGING. There had been NOTHING LIKE IT before, and there will be nothing like it EVER AGAIN. RIP Nick Ashford. Thank you for your Motown records and particularly "It Seems to Hang On" and thank you for your contribution to disco, one of the greatest things to ever come out of America, and a cornerstone of my childhood.

I know it breaks my heart that all of the greats will pass away (as we all will) and real music will no longer exist. I hate to think of Prince or Stevie or Smokey passing away

Me too, or of George Clinton or Bootsy Collins.

PDogz said:

Marlena58 said:

I know it breaks my heart that all of the greats will pass away (as we all will) and real music will no longer exist. I hate to think of Prince or Stevie or Smokey passing away

Me too, or of George Clinton or Bootsy Collins.

Yes I forgot about them. Thats what I hate about getting older. All the artist I've grown up with or either dead/ or dying off.

Marlena58 said:

PDogz said:

Me too, or of George Clinton or Bootsy Collins.

Yes I forgot about them. Thats what I hate about getting older. All the artist I've grown up with or either dead/ or dying off.

That is why we need to appreciate the ones that are still here now. Not long ago(barely a week or two). I was reading some very nasty remarks on this very site about Nick Ashford. How do they feel now?

The name that this site is named after, is torn apart on here on a daily basis. Wake up people! Stop criticizing your favorite artist. Just because they don't look or record the way U want them to.

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

Marlena58 said:

Yes I forgot about them. Thats what I hate about getting older. All the artist I've grown up with or either dead/ or dying off.

That is why we need to appreciate the ones that are still here now. Not long ago(barely a week or two). I was reading some very nasty remarks on this very site about Nick Ashford. How do they feel now?

The name that this site is named after, is torn apart on here on a daily basis. Wake up people! Stop criticizing your favorite artist. Just because they don't look or record the way U want them to.

Wholeheartedly agree. That's why I'm very careful in the way I even criticize "artists" that wear on my nerves [cough*KANYE WEST*cough]. As much as he annoys me, I'd be very sad if he passed away tomorrow. We're all here for such a very short time, we really should TRY to look for the best in people, or else just leave them alone.

I concede that we're all human.

This site wasn't as nasty as the one I used to frequently post at that always said Nick was a closet homosexual.

I think I and bboy only clowned on his hair... if you think that's nasty, you ain't seen what they say on there. Believe me I was as appalled but I decided to leave it alone like "fuck it".

Timmy84 said:

This site wasn't as nasty as the one I used to frequently post at that always said Nick was a closet homosexual.

I think I and bboy only clowned on his hair... if you think that's nasty, you ain't seen what they say on there. Believe me I was as appalled but I decided to leave it alone like "fuck it".

I've read worse on other sites to. By the way what is the site u are talking about? I wonder if its the same one.