'You'll Never Find' was Rawls' biggest hit, No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 2 on the pop charts in 1976. Like any other single recording, it only hinted at the rainbow of music Rawls created during a half century in the song game.
Rawls died early Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was hospitalized last month for treatment of lung and brain cancer, his publicist Paul Shefrin said. His wife Nina was at his bedside when he died. The family and Shefrin said Rawls was 72, although other records indicate he was 70.
As our appreciation of broad talent is often curiously muted, it may be only now on his death that fans and programmers will take a step back and fully realize how well Rawls could sing hard gospel, soft pop, irresistible soul and beautifully nuanced jazz.
And how easy he made it all sound.
Even the fact he didn't land more often on the charts reflected not at all on his musical skills, only on his range. Had he stayed in one place a little longer, he might have had more hit records. But to the end of his recording career, a splendid collection of
Frank Sinatra songs in 2003, he chose to remain a man in motion.
Like a
Johnny Hartman, Lou Rawls shone more brightly on a live stage than in a recording studio. Like an
Aaron Neville, he spent less time searching for radio hits than wrapping his warm voice around whatever caught his musical fancy, be that "Stormy Weather" or "Hoochie Coochie Man."
As a result, he didn't have the kind of career that landed with a smash and stayed in everyone's face. He built slow, stayed steady.
There remain fans today who might associate Rawls first with his Budweiser beer commercials or his 1980s telethons, who might have to be reminded that "You'll Never Find" was a Lou Rawls song, that Lou Rawls is the man who found the perfect tone for lines like "I'm not bragging on myself" and You're gonna miss, gonna miss my lovin'... "
He wasn't larger than life, like his childhood pal and long-time running buddy
Sam Cooke. He was exactly life-size, which made it all the more powerful when he would sing "World of Trouble" the way he did on his best-selling 1966 "Lou Rawls Live" album.
Rawls was born Dec. 1, 1933, in a rough section of Chicago, and his folks quickly steered him to the church in hopes of giving him a better shot at salvation. By the early '50s he had joined Cooke in the Teenage Kings of Harmony, the first of several gospel groups where he would learn the basics of both harmony and out-front singing.
Gospel groups of that era, particularly the younger ones, also flirted with the stylings of contemporary rhythm and blues vocal groups - who themselves had picked up those styles directly from gospel outfits like the Soul Stirrers, the Swan Silvertones, the Five Blind Boys and the Dixie Hummingbirds.
But Rawls stayed with the Lord, for the time being, and after serving in the Army he signed on as lead singer of the Pilgrim Travelers.
It was only after a serious 1958 automobile accident that he left the gospel highway, following Cooke to Los Angeles and the sinful world of secular music.
While his live show built enough of a reputation so he could feed himself, it would be years before he would crack the charts. Meantime, he teamed up with Cooke in 1962 on one of the most stunning gospel-flavored R&B recordings ever, a rocket-powered remake of
Charles Brown's 'Bring It On Home To Me.'
You know I'll always
Be your slave
Til I'm buried
Buried in my grave....
The turning point for Rawls' own career didn't come until 1966, when Capitol records put out the live album.
Live albums are often a sign of surrender, a way for labels to clean out a performer's closet and make a few last dollars with a cheap release before they drop him or her. This one, however, had just the opposite effect: It finally showcased what Rawls did best.
Then later that year he happened onto Ben Raleigh's "Love Is a Hurtin' Thing," which gave him his first radio hit. It was a great song for an aching heart at midnight and in mid-November it reached No. 1 on the R&B charts.
It also earned him a valuable spotlight on Arthur Conley's 1967 crossover hit,
"Sweet Soul Music."
By the end of 1966 Rawls was commanding $5,000 a night, a nice raise from the $10 he was making at the beginning of the decade.
Once he settled into the nightclub and cabaret world, Rawls often straddled the fine lines that criss-cross among pop, jazz, soul and R&B. His recordings sometimes captured the least interesting parts of this hybrid, and frankly, some of his early-'70s pop albums do him little justice.
That's why it was so gratifying to his fans when, in 1976, he moved to
Kenny Gamble and
Leon Huff's Philadelphia International Records. He had met Gamble and Huff in the mid-'60s when they were producing
Nancy Wilson, and in subsequent years he kept up with them through friends who had signed to their label, like
Harold Melvin and the
O'Jays. Since he was without a record deal by 1976, he got in touch and they were, it turned out, eager to have him.
They wrote "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine" for him - though it was rooted, perhaps, in Gamble's rocky ongoing divorce from singer
Dee Dee Sharp. Fittingly for Rawls' smooth voice, it wasn't as funky a track as some PIR production, but it did the right thing, which was to strip away the pop schmaltz and give him an urgent if subtle backing rhythm.
He had a few more hits with PIR over the next few years, including the top-10 "See You When I Git There" in 1977, and by 1980 he was ready to move along again. He cut an early version of "Wind Beneath My Wings" for Epic that sounded legitimately good -- now that took some skill -- and by the late '80s and early '90s he was snapping his fingers through some smooth jazz for Blue Note Records.
He also raised his profile during these years as the host of the annual "Lou Rawls Parade of Stars" telethon that drew artists like
Michael Jackson,
Frank Sinatra,
Luther Vandross and
Whitney Houston, while raising more than $200 million for the United Negro College Fund. Rawls distinguished himself from the vice president of the United States by frequently saying "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" from start to finish.
When he hit the charts a final time with the Sinatra CD in 2003, his voice was rough - not unlike Sinatra's and markedly unlike the three-octave instrument that made "Love Is a Hurtin' Thing" or "Stormy Monday" sound so effortless four decades earlier.
The songs suggest no self-consciousness about that change, because Rawls still understood singing and perhaps because he never seemed to demand that anyone pay homage to an image. He didn't mind being known as a genial telethon host, or a guy who had a few hits, or even the other voice on one of the great Sam Cooke records. He made a good living at music, he was respected by his peers, he got to record most of the songs he liked. That seemed to be enough.
In an age when celebrity often seems to be more valued than art, Lou Rawls got it right without braggin' on himself.
About the Author: David Hinckley is the critic-at-large at the New York Daily News, where he has written about music and popular culture since 1980. He is the co-author of 'Black and White Blues: The Rolling Stones 1963,' a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee and a former judge in the annual Ralph J. Gleason book awards. He has written for Rolling Stone, Us, Cosmopolitan and other magazines.
