3 R&B '80S VINTAGE BILLBOARD ARTICLES

Early pieces on Luther Vandross, Siedah Garrett and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis

As a college intern in the late ‘70s and then as black music editor from 1982 to 1989, I worked at Billboard magazine, which was the most important trade publication at the music business. The early to mid-80s was a time when synthesizers and computers changed the textures of black popular music, leaving behind the horn driven self-contained bands of the ‘70s for keyboard pads and drum machines. It was a genre redefining shift from analog to digital that impacted record makers as diverse as Prince, Kashif, Patrick Rushen and Quincy Jones.

At Billboard I interviewed many people who would become institutions (as well as man no one remembers.) The focus of these three articles I uneathed today is on producing and songwriting. Luther Vandross was the definitive male vocalist of hsi era. He was also a fine proucer of himself and others as this 1982 column makes clear. Siedah Garrett was a few years away from writing the Michael Jackson anthem, “Man in the Mirror,” when I met her in 1984, but she was well on her way to important career as a songwriter and singer. By good friend Steve Ivory covered the black music scene in Los Angeles better than anyone as this fascinating interview with Jimmy ‘Jam’ Harris and Terry Lewis illustrates. It was pleasure to edit him as he covered the vibrant LA scene. This pieces are a time capsule to the early parts of three legendary careers.