Lou Rawls, RIP

Gone too soon from lung cancer. One of my all-time favorites. I love Joe Williams because he was so straight-up manly and musical, virile and vulnerable. And I love Ella because her supple voice and astonishingly natural phrasing just plumb my depths and make me shiver and long for something just beyond my grasp. I loved Rawls because, like Marvin Gaye, his voice was sexy but so accessible; whether growling or soaring, both seemed to expend no effort – they were the epitome of cool.

All the great singers are leaving us. This New Year’s eve we had friends over and we flipped around looking at the pre/post midnight “entertainment” and it was so discouraging – all tuneless, go-nowhere “melodies” with cracking rhythem, over-melisma’d moaning and an abundance of posturing, booty/booby shaking. We was a complete lack of artistry or even humanity in the music, even in what we were told were “ballads.” Today’s singing style seems to swing between moaning-with-reverb or bellowing with breasts, and in between all is mediocrity.

“Where are the Frank Sinatra’s,” one of my pals mourned. “Where is the next Bobby Darin? Where is the next Ethel Waters or Lena Horne or Peggy Lee? Whatever happened to the pure singer-artist who could deliver the human song?”

They’ve gotta be out there, for sure – they must be, but maybe the music industry doesn’t believe there is an audience for same.

Or, God help us, perhaps this is all the human song has become, forgettable and disposable and lost.

RIP, Mr. Rawls.