Background and career
Luther Ronzoni Vandross Jr. ( VAN-drohss; April 20, 1951 – July 1, 2005) was an American R&B and soul singer, songwriter, and record producer. Over his career, he achieved eleven consecutive RIAA-certified platinum albums and sold over 40 million records worldwide. Vandross was recognized by Rolling Stone as one of the 200 greatest singers of all time (2023) and was named one of the greatest R&B artists by Billboard. NPR also included him among its 50 Great Voices. He won eight Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year in 2004 for "Dance with My Father". He has been inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Vandross began his music career in the late 1960s performing at the Apollo Theater in New York City as part of a local musical ensemble. The group later appeared on the television show Sesame Street in the early 1970s. He eventually established himself as a sought-after backing vocalist, contributing to albums by Roberta Flack, Donny Hathaway, Todd Rundgren, Evelyn "Champagne" King, Judy Collins, Chaka Khan, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, David Bowie, Ben E. King, Stevie Wonder, Laura Branigan, Donna Summer, Chic, and Roxy Music. In 1980, he served as the lead vocalist for the post-disco group Change on their Gold-certified album The Glow of Love, released on Warner/RFC Records. After Vandross left the group, he was signed to Epic Records as a solo artist and released his debut solo album, Never Too Much, in 1981. In 1982, he was credited as the primary producer on Aretha Franklin's album Jump to it, which topped the Billboard R&B Albums chart. His hit songs include "Never Too Much", "Here and Now", "Any Love", "Power of Love/Love Power", "I Can Make It Better", and "For You to Love". He also recorded several covers of songs originally performed by other artists, including "A House Is Not a Home", "Since I Lost My Baby", "Superstar", "I (Who Have Nothing)", and "Always and Forever". Vandross collaborated on several notable duets, including "The Closer I Get to You" with Beyoncé, "Endless Love" with Mariah Carey, and "The Best Things in Life Are Free" with Janet Jackson of which the latter two were hit songs in his career. The tribute album So Amazing: An All-Star Tribute to Luther Vandross was released shortly after his death. In 2024, Kendrick Lamar and SZA released the chart-topping single "Luther", paying homage to Vandross and sampling his rendition of "If This World Were Mine", a duet with Cheryl Lynn. In January of that same year, he was the subject of the documentary Luther: Never Too Much, which chronicles his life, career, and legacy. In 2026, Vandross was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Luther Ronzoni Vandross Jr. was born on April 20, 1951, at Bellevue Hospital in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Vandross was African-American. His birth occurred concurrently with General Douglas MacArthur's ticker-tape parade throughout the city. He was the fourth and youngest son of Mary Ida Vandross and Luther Vandross Sr, and his older siblings were Patricia, Ann, and Anthony. His father was an upholsterer and singer, and his mother was a nurse. Vandross was raised on Manhattan's Lower East Side in the Alfred E. Smith Houses public housing development. At the age of three, having his own phonograph, Vandross taught himself to play the piano by ear. His father died of diabetes when Vandross was eight years old. In 2003, Vandross wrote the song "Dance with My Father" and dedicated it to him; the title was based on his childhood memories and his mother's recollections of the family singing and dancing in the house. His family moved to the Bronx when he was nine. His older sisters, Patricia "Pat" and Ann, began taking Vandross to the Apollo Theater and to a theater in Brooklyn to see Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin perform. Patricia sang with the vocal group The Crests and was featured on the songs "My Juanita" and "Sweetest One". Vandross graduated from William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx in 1969. He attended Western Michigan University for one-and-a-half semesters before dropping out to continue pursuing a career in music.
While in high school, Vandross founded the first Patti LaBelle fan club, of which he was president. He formed a quartet with other students and won a summer talent show. Because each member of the quartet attended a different school, the quartet broke up. Vandross then formed a new group, Shades of Jade, that once played at the Apollo Theater. During his early years in show business, he appeared several times at the Apollo's famous amateur night. Vandross, along with some members of his previous two groups, joined Listen My Brother, a workshop group based at the Apollo Theater. They released one single "Only Love Can Make a Better World". The group performed in front of tens of thousands at the Harlem Cultural Festival in late August 1969. Directly afterward, the group appeared in the pilot episode and other episodes of the first season of Sesame Street during 1969–1970.
Starting in 1972, Vandross began a career as a session vocalist, starting with adding backing vocals to Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway in 1972, and worked on Delores Hall's Hall-Mark album (1973), duetting with her on the song "Who's Gonna Make It Easier for Me", a song he wrote, and contributed another song, "In This Lonely Hour". In 1974, he began working with British rocker David Bowie on his album, Young Americans. In addition to contributing background vocals, most notably on the title track, which Vandross himself conducted the background, Vandross allowed Bowie to use his composition, "Funky Music (Is a Part of Me)", and he and Bowie re-wrote as "Fascination". Vandross joined Bowie's tour as a backing vocalist in September 1974. Vandross also contributed the song, "Everybody Rejoice", to the Broadway musical, The Wiz (1975). During this era, Vandross would back several artists including Roberta Flack, Chaka Khan, Ben E. King, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, David Bowie, Cat Stevens, Gary Glitter, Ringo Starr, Sister Sledge, and Donna Summer, and for the bands Mandrill, Chic, Roxy Music, and Todd Rundgren's Utopia. In 1975, Vandross formed his own band, Luther, which consisted of former Shades of Jade members Anthony Hinton and Diane Sumler, as well as Theresa V. Reed, and Christine Wiltshire. The band signed with Cotillion Records that year and released their self-titled debut, Luther, which featured the relatively successful top 40 R&B singles "It's Good for the Soul" and "Funky Music (Is a Part of Me)", in 1976. A year later, the band dropped their second and final album, This Close to You (1977), featuring the top 40 R&B hit "The Second Time Around". In 1977, the band opened for Marvin Gaye at Radio City Music Hall. Neither of the band's albums sold enough copies to make the charts. After Cotillion dropped the group, Vandross bought back the rights to those albums, preventing them from being re-released. Both albums were eventually re-released in 2024. From 1977 until the early 1980s, Vandross wrote and sang commercial jingles for companies such as NBC, Mountain Dew, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burger King, and Juicy Fruit. A year prior, in 1976, Vandross' "Everybody Rejoice" was used in a Kodak commercial. Vandross was noted for his work with the disco group, Chic, heavily conducting background vocals for most of the band's albums, most prominently on songs such as "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)", "Everybody Dance" and "Le Freak". In 1978, he sang lead vocals for Gregg Diamond's disco band, Bionic Boogie, on the song titled "Hot Butterfly" and sang a duet with Patti Austin on the song "I'm Gonna Miss You in the Morning" on Quincy Jones's Sounds...and Stuff Like That!! that same year. Later, "Hot Butterfly" was covered by Chaka Khan on her 1980 album, Naughty, under the name, "Papillon", in which Vandross contributed background vocals. Around the time of him working on Khan's album, Vandross met a teenage Whitney Houston, who had been brought to the studio by her mother and Vandross' fellow session singing partner Cissy Houston. The two young singers forged a lifelong friendship. In 1980, Vandross had his career breakthrough when he became the featured singer in the pop-dance act, Change, a studio concept created by French-Italian businessman Jacques Fred Petrus. Vandross sang lead vocals on the group's hits, "The Glow of Love" and "Searching". In a 2001 interview with Vibe, Vandross said "The Glow of Love" was "the most beautiful song I've ever sung in my life." Both songs were from Change's debut album, The Glow of Love. Vandross was originally intended to perform on their second and highly successful album Miracles in 1981, but declined the offer as Petrus didn't pay enough money. Vandross's decision led to a recording contract with Epic Records that same year, but he also provided background vocals on "Miracles" and on the new Petrus-created act, the B. B. & Q. Band in 1981.
Vandross signed a solo deal with Epic Records shortly after his tenure with Change. Later in 1981, he released his debut album, Never Too Much, which topped the Billboard R&B Albums chart. The self-penned and produced title track was an immediate success, topping the Hot Soul Singles chart for two weeks and peaked at number four on the National Disco Action Top 80 chart, while the post-disco track crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100, peaking inside the top 40. Its follow-up single, "Don't You Know That?", peaked at number 10 on the Billboard soul charts. The album marked the beginning of a songwriting collaboration with bassist Marcus Miller, who played on many of the tracks and would also produce or co-produce several tracks for Vandross. The Never Too Much album was arranged by Vandross's high school classmate, Nat Adderley Jr., a collaboration that would last throughout Vandross's career. It was also notable for his reinterpretation and "radical" re-arrangement of Dionne Warwick's "A House Is Not a Home", which while it didn't chart, became one of his well known songs and would remain a showstopper in Vandross's concert tours for the remainder of his career. Never Too Much would eventually be certified double-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America and its success led to Vandross winning one of his first Grammy Award nominations for Best New Artist in 1982. During 1982, Vandross began producing for other artists, most notably Cheryl Lynn's Instant Love and Aretha Franklin's Jump to It. On the former, Vandross and Lynn released a slow jam rendition of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "If This World Were Mine", which peaked at number four on the newly renamed Black Singles chart. Vandross' work on Franklin's Jump to It led to the title track topping the R&B chart and the album itself became Franklin's first gold-certified album in six years. His sophomore album, Forever, For Always, For Love, was released in 1982 and topped the R&B Albums chart, going platinum thanks to hits such as "Bad Boy/Having a Party" and his rendition of the Temptations' "Since I Lost My Baby". The song, "She Loves Me Back", was later covered by New Zealand band DD Smash, who had a local hit cover with the song two years later. The title track and "Promise Me" also became popular songs on R&B radio. In 1983, Vandross produced Aretha Franklin's Get It Right, which featured the title track, which topped the R&B charts. In the same year, Vandross worked with his main musical influence, Dionne Warwick, producing Warwick's album, How Many Times Can We Say Goodbye. The title track duet was Vandross's second top 40 pop hit and also reached the top five of the Adult Contemporary chart. On the same album, Warwick recorded the Vandross ballad, "So Amazing", which became a Vandross solo hit several years later. "How Many Times Can We Say Goodbye" was featured on Vandross' third album, Busy Body, released in November 1983 and became his third consecutive number one R&B album and was notable for the ballad "Make Me a Believer" as well as "Superstar"/"Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do)", which reached the top five of the Black Singles chart in 1984 and became another signature staple for Vandross. Vandross was the voice of a cartoon character named Zack for ABC's Zack of All Trades, a three Saturday morning animated PSA spots.
Vandross followed that up with The Night I Fell in Love in 1985, which topped the R&B Albums chart and went double platinum due to singles such as "Til My Baby Comes Home", "It's Over Now", "Wait for Love" and his rendition of Brenda Russell's "If Only for One Night", which was sometimes accompanied by his rendition of Stevie Wonder's "Creepin'", that immediately followed the song on the album. That same year, Vandross added background vocals and ad-libs on Wonder's 1985 hit, "Part-Time Lover". Not too long afterwards, Vandross first spotted the talent of Jimmy Salvemini, who was 15 at the time, on Star Search. He thought Salvemini had the perfect voice for some of his songs and contacted him. He was managed by his brother, Larry Salvemini. A contract was negotiated with Elektra Records for $250,000 and Vandross agreed to produce the album. He contacted longtime friends Cheryl Lynn, Alfa Anderson (of Chic), Phoebe Snow and Irene Cara to appear on the record. Salvemini's album, Roll It, was released in 1986. That same year, he reunited with David Bowie after he added background vocals on Bowie's single "Underground", from the movie Labyrinth. In September 1986, Vandross' fifth solo album, Give Me the Reason, was released and like his previous albums before it, went to number one on the R&B Albums chart, while reaching number 14 on the Billboard 200, his highest peak at the time. The dance-pop song, "Stop to Love", became Vandross' first song to cross over to the top twenty of the Billboard Hot 100, partially due to the success of its music video, which achieved rotation on MTV, a channel Vandross had struggled to get on in the past. It also became his first top 40 hit in the UK peaking at number 24. The title track was a moderate pop success in the US but reached the top 40 in the UK, resulting in the album going two-times platinum in the country, his first album to do so. The album's follow-up hits included "There's Nothing Better Than Love" with Gregory Hines, "I Really Didn't Mean It" and "So Amazing" which, despite its low peak on the US R&B chart, became a well known song in his catalog. In 1987, Vandross wrote and produced "It's Hard for Me to Say" for Diana Ross from her Red Hot Rhythm & Blues album. Ross performed the song as an a cappella tribute to Oprah Winfrey on her final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show. She then proceeded to add it to her successful 2010–12 "More Today Than Yesterday: The Greatest Hits Tour. Vandross also recorded a version of this song on his Your Secret Love album in 1996. In 1988, Vandross' sixth album, Any Love became his sixth consecutive number one R&B album and also became his first to reach the top ten of the Billboard 200. It went platinum off the strength of the autobiographical title track, the Grammy-nominated dance single "She Won't Talk to Me" and "For You to Love". Vandross ended the decade by releasing the double-disc compilation, The Best of Luther Vandross... The Best of Love, which produced Vandross's biggest pop hit at the time, "Here and Now", which peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming his first top ten pop single. The ballad later won Vandross his first Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance at the 33rd Annual Grammy Awards in 1991, nearly a decade after his first nominations. Upon hearing his name called as the winner, Vandross stood up to accept as the audience gave the singer a standing ovation, noting of Vandross' earlier struggles of winning a Grammy.
