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Early records reveal that his sumptuous voice and longing lyrics were there from the start. Out of print since 1977, “This Close to You” will be available Friday.
Nile Rodgers’s very first professional recording session, in the late 1970s, got off to a bumpy start. He wasn’t the only guitarist booked to work with Luther, a group fronted by Luther Vandross, but Rodgers was the youngest, making him an easy target when Paul Riser, the Motown veteran arranging the session, noted something he didn’t like.
“He heard some things that were not correct on the chart,” Rodgers said, and “assumed it was me.” After an expletive-peppered exchange, Vandross stepped in and smoothed out the discord. From then on, Rodgers and Vandross were good friends and collaborators. (Rodgers said Vandross taught him everything he knows about “gang vocals,” the thrilling, unison shout-singing that made zesty singles like Chic’s “Everybody Dance” become enduring dance-floor staples.)
The session yielded “This Close to You,” a long out-of-print album originally released in 1977, which will hit streaming services on Friday. Vandross’s short-lived group also cut the self-titled “Luther” (1976), which was rereleased in April. Both albums, made for Cotillion Records, are receiving new attention ahead of the 20th anniversary of his death.
“Luther” includes the only known recording by Vandross of “Everybody Rejoice,” his composition for “The Wiz,” which returned to Broadway this year. JaQuel Knight, the choreographer of the revival, singled out the climactic number as one of the few songs that has a life of its own outside the context of the musical.
“Besides ‘Ease on Down the Road,’ it’s probably the biggest song in the production,” he said, before singing some of the triumphant hook. A documentary about Vandross’s life premiered earlier this year at Sundance and will be released in 2025.
But Vandross, an eight-time Grammy winner who worked his entire career to resolve the tensions between celebrity and privacy, between a desire for crossover pop success and a sublime ability for orchestrating in the background, may have preferred that the records never again saw the light of day.
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