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He couldn't be all that he could be until he was 30, yet Luther Vandross managed to become the premier romantic balladeer of his time, as much the voice of his generation as Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye and Al Green had been of theirs. Yet as tempting as it is to listen to Vandross's lush, soulful tenor and place him in a pantheon of classic soul men that stretches back to Ray Charles, his richest, most lasting influences were on women, particularly the great old-school divas such as Dionne Warwick, Cissy Houston and Aretha Franklin. That's one reason Vandross's singing rang so true -- particularly with women, who recognized the vulnerability and insecurity at the heart of his songs. Men, Vandross once told me, were locked into stereotyped roles. "The female singer who wants to be gruff and convincing, she will tend to go ahead and do that quicker than a male singer will soften up and become sensitive. That's society, that's rearing, that's the package. I refuse to buy into that." In a time when R&B increasingly became sexually explicit and vulgar, Vandross, who died on Friday at age 54, continued to hold out for romance. His old-soul agenda was revealed in song titles such as "Power of Love/Love Power," "Love Won't Let Me Wait," "Stop to Love," "There's Nothing Better Than Love" and "Any Love." They were not about the bump-and-grind of sex but the convolutions of the heart -- the rush of new love, the anguish of lost love (so beautifully expressed in "A House Is Not a Home"), the thrill of meeting someone special, and the fear of being rejected. These were songs about wanting and needing, about emotional connection, not notch-making. For many, Vandross was the multipurpose confessor/adviser/soul mate. "My first responsibility is to be honest in what I'm singing," Vandross said in one of a half-dozen interviews we did over the course of 20 years. "My favorite thing is when somebody's emotional state, more than their romantic state, is helped by one of my songs. |