Luther: Never Too Much

Sound running.

And now, we wanna do-- I wanna do...

my favorite ballad and beautiful love song

on the new album.

It goes like this.

One, two, three!

Yeah, yeah!

We have to have a party right away.

Right up top.

Hey, come on!

Whoo!

Hah!

That's right.

From the Bronx, New York,

Mister Luther Vandross.

Were you very poor as a child?

Mm-mm.

You know, the funniest thing is if there's enough love in

your house, and in your home, and in your life,

poor, rich, none of that stuff registers.

We were-- we were well fed, well cared-for,

we had toys at Christmas, and I don't know if we were poor

or not -- I'll have to ask my mother -- but it certainly--

my impression of growing up was that life was great.

This is very personal.

This is Luther talking about what he experienced as a child

and as a teenager,

aware of a potential career in music.

You know, I was a Motown child.

The Supremes and Temptations on Ed Sullivan was a big deal

around my neighborhood, you know.

So let's have a fine welcome for The Supremes.

See, I used to love-- I used to draw

pictures of The Supremes in math class,

you know, when I was a kid, 'cause I used to just love...

The way my mother would punish me for doing something wrong

or get to me is not allowing me to see The Supremes on

Ed Sullivan on a Sunday night, you know.

Oh...

And it worked; you know, I washed the dishes,

took the garbage out, did the homework,

did everything.

I met Luther when I was 15.

We liked so much of the same music.

The Supremes would appear on Ed Sullivan,

let's say, like, maybe at 11 o'clock at night when

everybody in my house was in the bed.

I'd be sitting by the phone and the phone would ring,

and I'd pick it up really quick.

He'd say, "Did you see Florence miss that step?"

Met Luther Vandross in the 11th grade.

And he would say-- I think our first...

date as friends was "Come to my house

and, uh, you know, I'll make you some lunch,

and we'll listen to some music."

Great!

When I met Luther, the first thing I was impressed with:

he had composition books stuffed with papers that he

had torn out of another one and stuffed inside there,

all filled with his lyrics.

The Shades of Jade was Luther's first actual band,

and we had a bass player, myself on guitar,

Fonzi, Luther, and we had a keyboard player.

So he said, "Well, if you're gonna be in the group,

you have to get the uniform."

I said, "What's the uniform?"

"Well, you gotta have...

patent leather green emerald shoes if you're in

The Shades of Jade!"

He said, "Well, the shoes cost 23 dollars,"

and at that time, back in the '60s,

my mother wasn't gonna give me no 23 dollars for no shoes to

sing in no group!

Don't you know, this fool goes to my mama's house --

I'm talking about a Latin household,

Puerto Rican-only; my mother did not speak English.

And there, Luther Vandross proceeds,

in his broken Spanish, "Uh, Señora Alomar,

uh, es, uh, muy, uh, importante,

uh, los zappatos, uh, uh, de, uh,

Carlos, uh, verde, uh, green, uh,

muy importante!"

And by the time he finished talking to my mother,

my mother came in the room and says,

"Here, take this 25 dollars and go buy those shoes."

See, he was a boss from the beginning.

He had-- he had vision, he had an idea of how he wanted it to

go down, and that's the way it went down!

Luther studied every singer that he loved.

What he liked about female singers was he loved

the tone, he loved the versatility,

the range.

You know, I used to love listening to

Aretha Franklin, 'cause Aretha's so bad, you know.

She doesn't have to get you at her peak

high note.

You know, Aretha, when she's singing in neutral,

can render you helpless.

Luther studied the soul of Aretha.

He studied The Sweet Inspirations and their tight

harmonies.

He studied Dionne Warwick; he studied-- he studied the

tonality and the grace of her voice.

When did you know that you could sing?

I knew that I wanted to sing...

I was, uh...

about 13, and I had gone to see, uh,

Dionne Warwick at the Brooklyn Fox Theater,

and I think I knew from that moment that I wanted to

be able to affect people the way she affected me that day.

It was the height of Black music.

The Apollo Theater was the center for everything

in Harlem musically.

We got to see it all happen.

And there was music on 125th street blasting all the time.

Here's one of the hottest groups in the country:

The Temptations!