Lou Rawls Survived a Car Crash and Found His Voice

Lou Rawls grew up in Chicago, raised by his grandmother in the Ida B. Wells projects on the city's South Side. At seven he began singing in the choir of the Greater Mount Olive Baptist Church, and through local groups he met Sam Cooke and Curtis Mayfield. When Cooke left the Highway QC's in 1951 for the Soul Stirrers, Rawls took his place.

Gospel took him to Los Angeles, where he joined the Pilgrim Travelers. In 1955 he enlisted in the Army as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne and made 26 jumps. Back with the Travelers, he nearly died in 1958 when a car crash during a tour with Cooke left him pronounced dead before reaching hospital. He lay in a coma for five and a half days, took a year to recover, and considered the crash a life-changing event.

Recovery led to the Hollywood Bowl in 1959 and early singles for Shar-Dee Records. In 1961 producer Nick Venet found him at the Pandora's Box nightclub and signed him to Capitol. A jazz album with Les McCann, Stormy Monday, appeared in 1962, followed by Black and Blue and Tobacco Road with a 17-piece big band. But the star-making moment came with the 1966 soul album Soulin', which contained “Love Is a Hurtin' Thing”, his first R&B number one. In 1967 he won a Grammy for “Dead End Street”.

Capitol dropped him in 1970, yet “Natural Man” on MGM briefly revived his career. Signing to Philadelphia International in 1976 produced All Things in Time, which sold a million copies and carried “You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine”, his biggest seller, topping the R&B and Adult Contemporary charts and reaching number two on the pop chart. By the end he had released 61 albums, sold more than 40 million records, and worked as a film, television and voice actor. The baritone that began in a church choir carried through everything he touched.