With today being the fifth anniversary of Luther Vandross' death, I wanted to revisit the legacy of this pop genius. Although many people know his music, less know of his early years. From the fandom of his childhood to singing background for David Bowie in the early 70s to producing Aretha Franklin a decade later, Vandross left his stamp on pop music.

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Growing up in New York City, the late Luther Vandross—who died five years ago today—spent the first thirteen years of his life within the concrete confines of the infamous Lower East Side. Raised a few blocks away from the murky waters of the East River, not far from where smelly men used to sell fish on South Street, he lived in Smith Houses projects.

He was enraptured by the voices of LaBelle and Diana Ross, the three-minute symphonies that drifted from sound factories like the Brill Building and Motown, the lyricism of Smokey Robinson and Hal David. All these sounds inspired Vandross to walk the pop path.

“My friends and I would sit in our apartments listening to music and daydreaming about the singers we loved,” Vandross admitted during our first meeting in the fall of 1996. Sitting in a swank hotel suite a few months before the release of Your Secret Love, his tenth and last studio album for Epic Records, we were about 60 blocks and a million miles away from Vandross’s old ‘hood.

“We were obsessed. ‘I wonder what it’s like backstage at an Aretha Franklin concert?’ we would say. Or, ‘You know Diana Ross and Aretha Franklin both live in Detroit—I wonder if they go to lunch together, then go get their nails done?’ That was the kind of stuff going through our minds.”

Yet, unlike most young music fans who eventually move on to lead mediocre lives, Luther was determined to become a part of his own pop daydream. Accordingly, after being turned-out by Dionne Warwick conjuring her chilly mojo from the stage of Brooklyn’s famous Fox Theater, Vandross resolved that he too wanted to be a star.

“It’s kind of funny, because I had actually gone to see the Shirelles and the opening act was this girl I had never heard of,” Vandross recalled. “She was striking and when she opened her mouth to sing I was like a young painter seeing Picasso or Matisse for the first time. Dionne Warwick was onstage, and from that moment I knew what I wanted to do.”

For the rest of this story, go to:
http://www.soulsummer.com/luther-vandross-how-many-times-can-we-say-goodbye