Luther Vandross

Luther Ronzoni Vandross Jr. † (April 20, 1951 – July 1, 2005 [aged 54]),https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005526/ was an American soul and R&B singer, songwriter, and record producer.
==Early Life==
He was born on April 20, 1951 at Bellevue Hospital, in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. His birth occurred concurrently with General Douglas MacArthur's ticker-tape parade throughout the same city. He was the fourth child and second son of Mary Ida Vandross and Luther Vandross Sr. His father was an upholsterer and singer, and his mother was a nurse.
==Career==
While in high school, Vandross founded the first Patti LaBelle fan club, of which he was president. He also performed in a group, Shades of Jade, that once played at the Apollo Theater. During his early years in show business, he appeared several times at the Apollo's famous amateur night. While he was a member of a theater workshop, Listen My Brother, he was involved in the singles "Only Love Can Make a Better World" and "Listen My Brother". The group performed in front of tens of thousands at the Harlem Cultural Festival in late August 1969. Directly afterward, he appeared with the group in the pilot episode and other episodes of the first season of Sesame Street during 1969–1970.
==Personal life==
Vandross never married and had no children. His mother outlived all of her four children, and his three elder siblings along with his father all predeceased him due to diabetes and asthma.
Vandross's sexual orientation was a subject of media speculation. "Though he never came out as gay, bisexual, or even straight, you had to be wearing blinders—as many of his fans, particularly female, must have been—to overlook his queerness", Jason King wrote in Vandross's obituary in The Village Voice. According to Gene Davis, a television producer who worked with Vandross, "Everybody in the business knew that Luther was gay". In 2006, Bruce Vilanch, a friend and colleague of Vandross, told Out magazine, "He said to me, 'No one knows I'm in the life.' ... He had very few sexual contacts". According to Vilanch, Vandross experienced his longest romantic relationship with a man while living in Los Angeles during the late 1980s and early 1990s. https://books.google.com/books?id=MGIEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q&f=falseIn December 2017, his friend Patti LaBelle confirmed that Vandross was in fact gay, but struggled to come out of the closet.https://news.amomama.com/103922-luther-vandross-sexuality-a-secret-patti.html
In December 1985, Vandross filed a libel suit against a British magazine after it attributed his 85-pound weight loss to AIDS. He weighed 325 pounds (147 kg) when he started a diet in May of that year.
==Illness and death==
He suffered from diabetes and hypertension.https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/luther-vandross-dies-at-54-62200/ On April 16, 2003, Vandross suffered a severe stroke at his home in New York City and was in a coma for nearly two months. The stroke affected his ability to speak and sing, and required him to use a wheelchair.
==Discography==
*Never Too Much (1981)
*Forever, for Always, for Love (1982)
*Busy Body (1983)
*The Night I Fell in Love (1985)
*Give Me the Reason (1986)
*Any Love (1988)
*Power of Love (1991)
*Never Let Me Go (1993)
*Songs (1994)
*This Is Christmas (1995)
*Your Secret Love (1996)
*I Know (1998)
*Luther Vandross (2001)
*Dance with My Father (2003)
== Tours ==
* Luther Tour (1981)
* Forever For Always For Love Tour (1982–1983)
* Busy Body Tour (1984)
* The Night I Fell in Love Tour (1985–1986)
* Give Me the Reason Tour (1987)
* The Heat (with Anita Baker) (1988)
* Any Love World Tour (1989)
* Best of Love Tour (1990)
* The Power of Love Tour (1991)
* Never Let Me Go World Tour (1993–1995)
* Your Secret Love World Tour (1997)
* Luther & Vanessa Live! (with Vanessa Williams) (1997)
* Take You Out Tour (2001–2002)
* BK Got Music Summer Soul Tour (with Gerald Levert, Angie Stone and Michelle Williams) (2002)
==References==
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