We lost Luther 4 years ago today

I intended to post this on Luther's birthday, but I was sort of blocked. But given the event in recent days, I wanted to throw Luther Vandross some love.

Like MJ, Luther strove for excellence and accomplished it. Like MJ, I never got the chance to see him in concert. Like MJ, he died way too prematurely. But unlike MJ, Luther, stricken with a catastrophic stroke, lingered for two years before passing away. Many of his fans knew that there was no hope for recovery, but they, including myself, prayed for a miracle; it didn't happen.

Like MJ's music, Luther's could be fun and joyful too, but Luther's true gift was in articulating the various aspects of falling in and out of love. Luther's optimism in the whole process of love was never naive and it was sure as hell not rhetoric. Luther's music wasn't born from a dry hump; there was a sophistication and a knowing about how precarious romantic matters and love can be. And yet, Luther made you believe that all of the heartache was worth it, even when your wounded pride said that it wasn't.

Here's a clip of Luther, singing with Gregory Hines, who we lost in 2003, the same year of Luther's stroke and Barry White's death (2003 was a total b*tch!). A gem of a duet, which never seems to get any airplay on the mainstream pop/adult contemporary radio stations. For some reason, those @$$hatted station managers are stuck on Here and Now and Dance with My Father.

Anyway, here's There's Nothing Better Than Love.