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I’m always surprised when I mention James Ingram to a friend, and they don’t recognize his name. But when I sing a few bars of one of his songs, they join in and say “Oh, yes … I love that song!” and they continue singing all the lyrics.
Music journalist and culture writer Naima Cochrane nailed it when she wrote, “You Were Probably a James Ingram Fan, Even If You Didn’t Know Who James Ingram Was” for Billboard in 2019.
James Ingram’s name doesn’t come up often in current music discussions. He didn’t have the vast catalogue and longevity of Luther Vandross, or the skyrocketing pop success of Lionel Richie. He and a few other contemporaries who spent time at the top of Billboard’s R&B and Hot 100 charts in the ‘80s and early ‘90s – Jeffrey Osborne, Billy Ocean, Peabo Bryson – now live on Quiet Storm and Easy Listening radio, and in ‘80s LP collections. But during Ingram’s run of just over a decade, spanning from 1981 to 1994, he knocked it out of the park consistently.
His ratio of cultural impact to overall output is phenomenal. In addition to 14 career Grammy nominations, two Grammy wins, consecutive best original song Oscar nominations, and multiple top 40 hits, Ingram penned one of the biggest hits for one of the biggest pop stars in history, soundtracked one of the major love stories in daytime soaps, proved Disney didn’t have the market locked for animated theme songs-turned-pop hits and contributed to several of mentor Quincy Jones’ most iconic productions. Casual music fans and younger audiences who may not have known Ingram by name have likely started to realize they were, in fact, familiar with his smooth baritone and his work.
Jones discovered Ingram through the demo for “Just Once,” and immediately got him to his studio. He proceeded to style Ingram’s Pentecostal church-bred voice with just enough restraint to be pop friendly, without removing the depth and soul that made it powerful. Nelson George wrote of Ingram in his book Thriller: The Musical Life of Michael Jackson, “[He] sonically would have been right at home wailing on a Stax single backed by Booker T. and the MGs. But this [was] the ‘80s, a time when crossover to white audiences drove most creative decisions for black singers.” The controlled-but-emotive sound Jones and Ingram developed positioned Ingram to become one of the foremost balladeers of the era
Ingram was born Feb. 16, 1952, in Akron, Ohio. He left us too soon at the age of 66 on Jan. 29, 2019, but during his musical career, he gifted us with some of the most heartfelt and soul-stirring ballads.
So just who was James Ingram? Ondine E. Le Blanc wrote his biography for Musician Guide.
His musical biography, however, begins in the early 1970s, when he immersed himself in that decade's enthusiasm for soul and funk. Skilled in an array of instruments, including piano, synthesizer, drums, bass, and guitar, Ingram decided to relocate to Los Angeles when his band, Revelation Funk, returned to their hometown of Akron, Ohio, after a brief stint on the West Coast. Ingram described those first years in Los Angeles to Billboard' s David Nathan, explaining simply, "I had a lot of doors slammed in my face." 1973 offered him his first real opportunity, as keyboardist for Leon Hayward, the RCA artist and producer who would become known for his hit single "Don't Push It Don't Force It," which featured Ingram's piano work.
The association with Hayward afforded Ingram a brief relationship with an RCA executive who wanted to sign him as a solo artist. Ingram cut three songs with RCA before the executive who had championed him left the label. RCA summarily dropped Ingram--paying him for the work, but never releasing any of the cuts. After this disappointment, Ingram struggled to get by. Several years passed before he made the first significant contact of his career--that of legendary pianist-singer Ray Charles. Through his work with a musician named Joel Webster, Ingram developed a connection to Charles's label, Tangerine Records, and eventually met Charles himself. When Charles scored a hit in 1977 with the single "I Can See Clearly Now," Ingram could be heard backing him up on organ.
I wish I knew the name of the brother behind the wonderful YouTube channel “Celebrity Underrated.” He fills in much of Ingram’s early story, about his family, wife, and musical brothers.
Returning to Ingram’s Musician Guide biography:
Perhaps the most momentous step in Ingram's career occurred, however, when he entered the orbit of acclaimed producer Quincy Jones. Ingram met Jones in Charles's studio but first impressed him some time later, when the producer had an opportunity to hear Ingram's voice on some demo tapes. The tapes were actually intended for a music publishing company, ATV Music, and were supposed to sell Jones the songs, not the singer. Ingram described the scenario to Nathan: "I was singing demos for a publishing company ... at $50 a song and doing two or three a day. I must have done that for three or four months. Quincy was listening to some of their songs for The Dude album and he heard 'Just Once.' He wanted to know who the singer was on the demo and he got my number ... and called me at home."
Music producer and songwriter Benjamin Wright Jr. shares the backstory of “Just Once,” as well as “One Hundred Ways.”
Both songs would go on to be released as singles from Quincy Jones’s album “The Dude.”
Here is Ingram performing “Just Once” live at the 1982 Grammy Awards, where he was nominated for Best New Artist.
University of Southern California music professor Jason King wrote Ingram’s obituary for NPR.
The Unlikely Success And Down-To-Earth Soul Of James Ingram
Remarkably dependable and reliable, Ingram became Quincy Jones' go-to singer-writer, an essential collaborator/fixture in Jones' ten-year blockbuster period (1979-1989), in which he became the music industry's most successful black record producer. Jones and Ingram enjoyed a lifelong creative relationship. In 1982, Quincy Jones enlisted Ingram to rewrite Michael Jackson's mid-tempo groover "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" as a bubbly, uptempo funk confection. Given its placement on Thriller, which became one of the most commercially successful albums ever, Ingram received decades of royalty checks that surely allowed him a relative measure of industry freedom. Quincy Jones also produced two of Ingram's 1980s solo albums: 1983's solid It's Your Night and 1986's lackluster Never Felt So Good. Ingram appeared on a slew of other Jones productions, too, including Donna Summer's 1982 Donna Summer, 1985's The Color Purple soundtrack and blockbuster charity single "We are the World"; and as a featured vocalist on all-star, multi-generational boudoir slow jam "The Secret Garden (Sweet Seduction Suite)." Jones even produced Ingram's final studio album, 2008's heartfelt return-to-my-gospel-roots Stand (in the Light).
"When people ask me," Ingram told the Associated Press in 1991, "I say I studied at the University of Ray Charles and went to learn with the master, Quincy."
Throughout his career, Ingram struggled with branding. "The trouble is people hear my songs," he once admitted, "and they say, 'I didn't know you sang it.' " Name recognition wasn't his only struggle. Record labels, in search of crossover nirvana, continually tried to market Ingram to pop radio, hoping to turn him into a mainstream star like Lionel Richie, rather than delivering him to black R&B audiences. Without proper industry promotional support, only a handful of Ingram's singles ended up topping the R&B charts. Despite those Thriller royalty checks, Ingram, caught between conflicting racial imperatives of pop and R&B, sometimes struggled to build a wider audience with his music. In a 1982 interview, he confessed: "It's frustrating at times when I release a record and they tell me it's not black enough for some radio stations ... It's like telling the black audience they're not important, like I'm not interested in them."
Ingram would record a duet with Patti Austin, “Baby, Come To Me,” which soared in popularity after it appeared in a soap opera, according to Songfacts.
In May of 1982, it peaked at #73 on the US charts. Months later, the song found new life when it was used in the ABC soap opera General Hospital for romantic scenes involving Luke Spencer (played by Anthony Geary) after his wife Laura temporarily left the show. ABC got lots of calls and letters about the song, and Warner Brothers Records decided to re-release the song as a single due to popular demand. It hit #1 in the US in February 1983.
Here’a Ingram with Austin in February 1983, performing “Baby, Come To Me” for the Dutch TV program “Top Pop.”
The duet with Austin was just the beginning of a string of hit duets. Next was "Yah Mo B There," with Michael McDonald, in 1983.
According to Michael McDonald, "Yah Mo B There" is based on the original Hebrew name for God (Yahweh), and was originally called "Yahweh Be There." The title was James Ingram's idea: "We were talking about how to say 'God will be there' without scaring most of the audience away."
It was co-written and produced by Quincy Jones (who does the African style sounds in the song) and Rod Temperton, who later wrote "Sweet Freedom" for McDonald (the theme from Running Scared).
The song is a duet between the soul singers Michael McDonald and James Ingram. They wrote it after Quincy Jones asked them to collaborate on a song for Ingram's album It's Your Night, which Jones was producing. The wrote a few songs that didn't pass muster with Jones before landing on "Yah Mo B There." McDonald and Ingram didn't know each other very well when they started, but they became good friends by the end of the process.
"I really wanted to get one on that album," McDonald told Classic Pop magazine. "I love James' voice and we became best friends."
Ingram and McDonald performed the song live for the 2001 “Michael McDonald - A Gathering of Friends” concert film.
Ingram recorded and performed a slew of duets over the next few years, with a wide spectrum of singers. A compilation, “Forever More,” was released in 1999.
Here are a few of my favorites:
1986: Ingram joined Linda Ronstadt to touch hearts with “Somewhere Out There,” from the animated film “An American Tail.”
1995: Love song legend Anita Baker joins Ingram one “When You Love Someone,” for the “Forget Paris” soundtrack.
1993: For the soundtrack to “Beethoven’s 2nd.” Ingram joined Dolly Parton for “The Day I Fall In Love,” which was nominated for an Academy Award. I was pleasantly surprised by the song.
The last album Ingram recorded was “Stand (in The Light)”in 2008. It was a return to his gospel roots. The opening lyrics to the titular song still resonate today.
In a time when the words of the truth are not spoken
There's a war... there is hatred tearing us apart
And the sea reaches high to horizons now broken
And the world is so weary and fighting and lost
You must go... go on and
[Chorus]
Stand in the light
You will hear your soul singing
Stand in the light
Close your eyes and you'll see all that goodness can be
It's love, real love...
Give it a listen.
I can’t possibly include all of my Ingram faves in one story, but look for more in the comments, where I hope you’ll also share your favorites.
James Ingram rests in love on his birthday—and every day. And if you didn’t know who he was before, you do now.
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