Lou Rawls

With his deep, purring, baritone voice, Lou Rawls was a romantic R&B crooner who helped pioneer soul music in the 1960s and 1970s, won three Grammy Awards and sold over 40 million records. Growing up in Chicago, Rawls sang in the same church choir as Sam Cooke and Curtis Mayfield and played with several local R&B bands, before serving as a paratrooper in the US Army. He later joined the popular gospel group Pilgrim Travellers but disaster struck on tour when they were involved in a car crash that left Rawls in a coma and wiped away his memory for a while. He took a year to recover but went on to make his name with debut album Stormy Monday (1962), a mix of jazz, blues and gospel standards released on Blue Note Records. His classic ballad Love Is A Hurtin' proved his big crossover hit in 1966 and he won his first Grammy Award for single Dead End Street, while albums Live!, Soulin' and Feelin' Good all fared well. Described by Frank Sinatra as having the "silkiest chops in the singing game", his finest work came on albums Natural Man (1971), All Things In Time (1976) and When You Hear Lou, You've Heard It All (1977) and he reached Number 2 in the US charts with signature single You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine. In later life he sang the Star Spangled Banner at Muhammad Ali fights and World Series baseball games and used his velvet tones for voice-overs on Budweiser commercials and in cartoon series such as Hey Arnold! and Garfield. Rawls also appeared in a number of movies, including Blues Brothers 2000 and Leaving Las Vegas, before his death in 2006 from cancer.