A fifty-dollar demo that led to a Grammy

James Ingram was born in Akron, Ohio, attended East High School there and went to the University of Akron on a track scholarship. He then moved to Los Angeles and played with the band Revelation Funk, which appears in the Rudy Ray Moore film Dolemite. Before becoming famous he also played keyboards for Ray Charles. His first publishing deal was with 20th Century Fox, and it was there that he sang the $50 demo of “Just Once”.

That demo set it all going. Ingram sang “Just Once” and “One Hundred Ways” on Quincy Jones's 1981 album The Dude, which brought him three Grammy nominations, including Best New Artist. “One Hundred Ways” won him the Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. His own debut, It's Your Night, came in 1983 and included “There's No Easy Way”. He worked with Donna Summer, Anita Baker, Natalie Cole, Kenny Rogers and others, and he co-wrote “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” with Jones for Michael Jackson, a US top ten single.

Ingram is perhaps best known for his collaborations. In February 1983 the duet with Patti Austin, “Baby, Come to Me”, went to number one on the Hot 100, and the pair followed it with “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?”. With Michael McDonald he recorded “Yah Mo B There”, which won the Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group. He sang “Somewhere Out There” with Linda Ronstadt for the animated film An American Tail, and it, and its video, became hits.

His only number-one single as a solo artist, “I Don't Have the Heart”, topped the Hot 100 in October 1990. Ingram also wrote: “The Day I Fall in Love”, from Beethoven's 2nd, and Patty Smyth's “Look What Love Has Done”, from Junior, earned him nominations for the Oscars, Golden Globes and Grammys in 1994 and 1995. He ended with two Grammys, two Oscar nominations, eight Top 40 hits on the Hot 100 and twenty on the Adult Contemporary chart. He died on 29 January 2019.