Luther Vandross Sang Behind Everyone Before Himself

Luther Vandross taught himself to play piano by ear at the age of three, on his own phonograph. He was born in 1951 in Manhattan and raised on the Lower East Side. His father, an upholsterer and singer, died of diabetes when Luther was eight. Decades later Vandross wrote “Dance with My Father” for him, drawing on childhood memories and his mother's recollections of the family singing and dancing at home.

His sisters took him to the Apollo Theater and a Brooklyn theatre to see Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin perform. By the late 1960s he was himself playing the Apollo with a local ensemble, which later appeared on Sesame Street in the early 1970s. Then he became one of the most sought-after backing vocalists around, singing on albums by Roberta Flack, Donny Hathaway, Chaka Khan, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Donna Summer, Chic and Roxy Music.

In 1980 he fronted the post-disco group Change on their gold-certified The Glow of Love. After leaving, he signed to Epic and released his solo debut, Never Too Much, in 1981, adding a track such as “Sugar and Spice (I Found Me a Girl)” to that early catalogue. In 1982 he produced Aretha Franklin's Jump to It, which topped the R&B albums chart.

What followed was remarkable consistency: eleven consecutive platinum albums, over 40 million records sold and eight Grammys, including Song of the Year in 2004 for “Dance with My Father”. He turned covers such as “A House Is Not a Home” into signatures and recorded duets with Beyoncé, Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson. He died in 2005, but the influence continued. In 2024 Kendrick Lamar and SZA released “Luther”, sampling his version of “If This World Were Mine”, and a documentary, Luther: Never Too Much, appeared the same January. In 2026 he entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, long after the man who sang everyone else's backgrounds became the lead.