My New York Neighbor, Luther Vandross

"Too American For The UK Market!"

"David is very high on integrity. In the 20 years I’ve known him, nothing I’ve said to him off the record has appeared in print -not even implicitly. He's a genuinely nice, SOBER person -one of the criteria for the friendships I keep. I met him in '74 when I'd just come off the road with David Bowie and I'd saved my money to make a 3-song demo with my group. Bowie introduced me to Bette Midler; Bette introduced me to producer Arif Mardin; Arif introduced me to people at Atlantic like Dave Glew, Jerry Wexler and Henry Allen who was starting a new label at the time called Cotillion Records. I recorded the first 45 for that label, ‘It's Good For The Soul’, and my album was the first one, too. David interviewed me and the other four people in the group just before the album came out. Later, I was walking down the street and saw him in the neighborhood, and discovered that he lived there. He was friendly and his English tone sounded harmless enough - though I'm sure there are English hatchet murderers too! But David isn't one of them. He used to come by my house and those were the days I used to cook a lot -my first apartment after I'd moved out of my mother's house. I'd invite David over to play cards -the game 500 - and I would beat him silly!; or we'd watch the Supremes and Dionne Warwick on TV. We'd hang out and just have a ball! Our friendship is a very low maintenance friendship. 'Are we still friends?' never comes up. We can go 6 months without talking to each other but the minute we do talk everything is resumed". - Luther Vandross, 1993

In 1976, writing for Britain's "Blues & Soul" magazine in New York, I had my first encounter with Luther (Ronzoni) Vandross, then the founder of a five-man group newly signed to Atlantic Records' Cotillion imprint.  With a few weeks, I discovered that Luther and I were neighbours, living in adjacent buildings on West 56th St.