Soul singer/songwriter Bobby Caldwell, finest recognized for his 1978 hit “What You Won’t Do For Love,” has died at 71. His spouse, Mary Caldwell, introduced the news in a tweet on Wednesday morning, writing that, “Bobby passed away here at home. I held him tight in my arms as he left us. I am forever heartbroken. Thanks to all of you for your many prayers over the years. He had been ‘FLOXED,’ it took his health over the last 6 years and 2 months. Rest with God, my Love.”
While Mary Caldwell didn’t specify what ailment the singer suffered from, “Floxed” usually refers to a situation the Regenerative Medicine L.A. therapy heart says arises from the opposed results of consuming fluoroquinolone antibiotics corresponding to Ciprofloxacin, Levaquin or Avelox; no extra info on the reason for Caldwell’s dying was accessible at press time.
Robert Hunter Caldwell was born on April 15, 1951 in New York City and acquired his first large break serving because the rhythm guitarist for Little Richard within the early Nineteen Seventies earlier than going solo later within the decade and scoring a success out of the field on his TK Records debut with the No. 9 Billboard Hot 100 single “What You Won’t Do For Love.”
In a 2005 interview with NPR, Caldwell mentioned the Miami-based label with a largely Black, R&B roster didn’t “want it to be well-known that I was white,” which explains why his image was left off the duvet of his self-titled debut. Additionally, he mentioned the report was initially accomplished with out the graceful, jazzy ballad “Love,” which Caldwell wrote and minimize in a rush to please TK boss Henry Stone. The track went on to cement Caldwell’s popularity as a “blue-eyed soul” star and it has been lined since by everybody from Boyz II Men to Michael Bolton, Roy Ayers and Snoh Aalegra; it was additionally sampled by Tupac Shakur on “Do For Love.”
He scored once more in 1980 with the light piano pop tune “Open Your Eyes” from that 12 months’s Cat within the Hat album, which was later sampled by producer J Dilla for the track “The Light” from Common’s Like Water for Chocolate album.
Describing his sound, which blended pop with clean jazz, R&B and a Brazilian/island vibe, Caldwell instructed NPR that his time rising up in Miami absorbing every kind of music — “Haitian, reggae, Latin, pop, R&B” — in addition to befriending his actual property mother’s consumer, reggae icon Bob Marley, helped him discover his signature groove.
Caldwell continued to launch albums all through the Eighties, Nineteen Nineties and into the mid-2010s, throughout his remaining assortment, 2015’s Cool Uncle. He additionally wrote the hit 1986 duet “The Next Time I Fall” for Amy Grant and Chicago’s Peter Cetera, in addition to songs for Neil Diamond, Boz Scaggs, Ayers, Chicago and Natalie Cole, amongst others.
A model of this story first appeared on billboard.com
