Luther Vandross

Luther Vandross was born on the Lower East Side of New York on April 20, 1951. His first big break came in 1975, when he performed as a backing singer on [a=David Bowie]'s Young Americans album, and received a co-writer credit after his song "Funky Music" was adapted by Bowie to become "Fascination". He was also a backing singer for [a=Bette Midler], [a=Donna Summer] and [a=Carly Simon]. He was lead singer of the group [a=Change], which had hits such as "A Lover's Holiday", "Searching" and "The Glow Of Love". In the late 1970s he was part of a singing quintet consisting former Shades of Jade members Anthony Hinton and Diane Sumler, Theresa V. Reed, and Christine Wiltshire, also called [a=Luther]. In 1981, Luther released his debut solo album [r=205940]. Between 1982 and 1985, five albums were released, all selling over a million copies each. Over the years, he was awarded five platinum and one double platinum disc, as well as winning 8 Grammy awards. He died July 1, 2005 at the age of 54, two years after suffering a major stroke.