R&B singer Lou Rawls dies after battle with cancer

Hans Nichols

LOS ANGELES — Silken-voiced crooner Lou Rawls, who started singing at age 7 in a gospel choir and grew into a beloved blues, jazz and R&B performer, died on Friday at age 72 after a battle with lung cancer, his spokesman said.

Rawls, a singer with a four-octave range known for such signature hits as “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine,” “Lady Love” and “Love is a Hurtin’ Thing,” died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, spokesman Paul Shefrin said.

Shefrin quoted Rawls’ family as saying he was 72 years old, even though some reference books place his age at 70.

Rawls won three Grammy awards and 13 nominations over a career that lasted more than 40 years. During his career, he opened for The Beatles and appeared with the legendary Sam Cooke, a childhood friend.

He sold more than 40 million albums, acted in 18 movies, including “Blues Brothers 2000” and “Leaving Las Vegas” and appeared in 16 television series, starting with a small role in “77 Sunset Strip.”

Rawls received many honors during his lifetime including having a street named after him in Chicago.

Ill for more than a year with lung cancer that spread to his brain, Rawls recently filmed public service announcements for Hurricane Katrina relief. His last public performances were a series of three concerts he gave in San Diego in mid-November, Shefrin said.

In an interview last month with the Arizona Republic, Rawls was optimistic despite his cancer. “Don’t count me out, brother. There’s been many people who have been diagnosed with this kind of thing, and they’re still jumpin’ and pumpin’,” he said.

Joel Goldenthal, executive director of Jazz in Arizona, told the paper, “Lou Rawls is a magnificent talent and has one of the most recognizable voices in modern American music.”

Rawls was born in Chicago’s South Side and was raised by his grandmother, who made sure he sang in the choir at her Baptist church.

As a teenager he sang with several gospel groups and after a stint in the Army as a paratrooper, he joined the Pilgrim Travelers with Cooke, a soul singer to whom he was often compared.

During one tour in the late 1950s, he was involved in a crash where he was pronounced dead, but was actually in a coma that last for 5 1/2 months.

It took him more than a year to recuperate. When he recovered he switched to secular music, providing back-up on some of Cooke’s seminal recordings and releasing a jazz album of his own called “Stormy Monday” in 1962.

His first full-fledged R&B album “Soulin’” in 1966 contained his first hit “Love is a Hurtin’ Thing.”

In 1971, Rawls hit the Top 20 again with “Natural Man,” a song whose theme was black pride.

“I’ve gone the full spectrum, from gospel to blues to jazz to soul to pop. And the public has accepted what I’ve done, through it all,” Rawls once said on his Web site.

Although he never went to college, Rawls became a major fund-raiser for the United Negro College Fund. He recalled that a woman once came up to him and said, “Thank you, you made my grandson the first college grad in our family.”

(Reuters)