The only time I saw Lou Rawls perform was in 1970 at a smoky nightclub atop an office building off the
Ginza in downtown
Tokyo.
I was buying a pack of cigarettes from a kiosk outside the club and had no intention of going in.
That is, until I heard his incredible voice.
Rawls, who died today in L.A. at age 72 (or 70, depending upon who you believe) appealed to black and white audiences like and sold more than 40 million albums over a five-decade career that embraced gospel to blues to jazz to soul to pop. He was somewhere between soul and pop when heard him.
The show-stopper that night was “Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head” from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” the 1969 hit movie. The audience went wild over it and Rawls, being the sweet man that he was, sang it a second time for an encore.
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