Songoftheday 4/29/24 - Back when I was a child before life removed all the innocence, my father would lift me high and dance with my mother and me...

 

"Dance With My Father" - Luther Vandross

from the album Dance With My Father (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #38 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 4

 

Today's song comes from the late R&B vocal master Luther Vandross, who had signed with Clive Davis' J Records and returned to the top-40 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 with the single "Take You Out". But that was at the expense where the record company tried to remake him into a skirt-chasing loverboy. And selling a million plus copies of the album gave Luther the momentum to be more creative with his second set of the label, Dance With My Father. However its release was marked by the singer suffering a stroke in the spring of 2003 that put him in a coma up to the release date and would trouble him for the rest of his life. The lead single and title track "Dance With My Father", written by Vandross with pop star in his own right Richard Marx. It was recorded as a tribute to his father, who passed away from diabetes when Luther was a child, which gave his current situation (he also suffered from the same afflictions) even more gravitas. The lyrics are a bittersweet recollection of his dad, who brought his family together and left both his mother and himself devastated at his loss. The pleading to a higher power to please bring him back is palpable, and of course Vandross wrings every last bit of emotion out like a lemon juicer. The production from Luther and Nat Adderley Jr. (who he had worked with throughout his career) is a little cold and calculated as was the early 00s, but it's not distracting enough to pull away from his voice and the message of the songs. Since Luther was obviously unable to make a music video for the song himself, a bevy of his famous friends either filmed parts with their children or fathers or at least lent pictures, although it includes some cringe pairings as Beyonce dancing with her philandering father and louse Brian McKnight who disavows the son he's filmed with...

"Dance With My Father" brought Luther back to the Hot 100's Top-40 for a final time in September of 2003, while climbing to #28 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart. On the radio, the song peaked at #4 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") chart, #20 on the Dance Airplay list, and spent five week at #1 on the older-skewing Adult R&B format. Internationally, the single rose to #4 in Ireland and #21 in the United Kingdom. The Dance With My Father album, released in June of 2003, became his first and only album to top the Billboard 200 sales tally, and spent two weeks at #1 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over two million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2004, "Dance With My Father" won the coveted Song Of The Year award, along with Best Male R&B Vocal Performance, and was up for Best R&B Song as well, which went home with Beyonce and Jay-Z for "Crazy In Love". The Dance With My Father record also won for Best R&B Album. 

The second single from the album, "Think About You", spent 48 weeks on Billboard's R&B Singles chart peaking at #29, while "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #103. The song topped the Adult R&B radio chart for three weeks. That was followed by a cover of the country song "Buy Me A Rose", which Kenny Rogers took to the top of the country chart and top-40 pop in 2000. Vandross' take spent a half a year on the Adult Contemporary airplay with a high of 13. Lastly, a remake of the late 70's classic "The Closer I Get To You", recorded as a duet with Beyonce, won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Duo/Group Vocal Performance in 2004, and later that summer climbed to #62 on the R&B Singles chart. But Luther would only be well enough to tape a message to be broadcast at the awards, promising that he would be back. A Live Radio City Music Hall album, recorded a couple months before his stroke, came out in October of 2003, and went to #22 on the Billboard 200, and #6 on the R&B Albums chart.

Sadly though, that never came to be, and Vandross passed away from heart trouble predicated by his health problems in the summer of 2005 at the too-young age of 54. The following year, The Ultimate Luther Vandross Collection was released spanning his career, and included two previously unreleased songs. "Shine", originally meant for the 2003 movie The Fighting Temptations, climbed to #31 on the R&B Singles chart, and "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #116. The disco-styled song went to #4 on the Adult R&B chart, while the remixes of the track brought him back to the Dance Club Play top ten at #10. It also was a minor hit in the UK at #50. The second, "Got You Home", went to #53 on the R&B Singles list, and hit #10 on the Adult R&B radio chart. "Got You Home" was posthumously nominated for the Grammy for Best Male R&B Performance, which went to John Legend for "Heaven". The Ultimate collection went to #9 on the Billboard 200 and #3 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies. 

This will be Luther's last time on this series, but his legacy as a soul great lives on.

(8/10)

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In 2004, American Idol finalist and country singer Kellie Coffey released a cover of "Dance With My Father" as a single from what was supposed to be her shelved second album, and just missed the top-40 on Billboard's Country Songs airplay chart at #41...

and lastly, because we never got a live version of the song from Luther, here's his final interview with Oprah Winfrey...

Up tomorrow: Luther's Grammy-winning duet partner tops the chart with a young'un.