On January 29th, 2019, James Ingram, one of my favorite singers, passed away from brain cancer. I’m a little late in paying tribute to him, but I wanted to do so because his work, as with so many musicians who were active in the 1980s, helped get me through some of the darkest times of my life.
I woke up this morning to some rather disheartening news. It was announced that Rod Temperton, a British songwriter, had passed away after a short battle with cancer. Who was Rod Temperton, I can hear some of you asking? To simply dub him a songwriter isn’t enough. He’s a man who made you dance ecstatically, even if you didn’t know his name. He’s a man who wrote music you might’ve been conceived to in the 1970s, even if others did the vocals. He’s one of the best examples of blue-eyed soul, and this is my tribute to this legendary talent.