When Luther Vandross released his debut solo record Never Too Much in August of 1981, he’d accrued enough experience, a decade of paying dues as a stand-out vocalist in the music industry. This Lower East Side-born city dweller had the stuff to write a quintessential New York cut.
What is that you ask?
Nowadays it’s called an earworm, but back then it was a city cut, a jam. Something that was playing everywhere. It was in the air and the pollution. Before the internet, the way you knew a song was taking over the city was by entertaining and then accepting what was coming from the streets. What was blaring from boomboxes? What came passing and going on subway platforms? What were B-boys and Breakers using as their new tune of inspiration showcasing their moves in the Bronx or out on 42nd Street on a Friday night? That was the internet. Those factors influenced what made it to Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Moreover, Don Cornelius and his cultural weathervane Soul Train predicted what also made it to Dick Clark’s stage.
Black radio was always an early adopter of what would be huge, not just in New York, but the rest of the country; it was three to six months ahead of everyone. That means Frankie Crocker, program director of WBLS, heard Larry Levan play “Never Too Much” at the Paradise Garage at night or the wee early hours of the morning and immediately played that record on WBLS the very same morning, around rush hour and from there, it would take off.
Black radio stations chose what would be the hit more than the labels; they were not actively watching what was happening in the streets, record stores, dance floors, barber shops, salons, kitchens of fine dining establishments, public basketball courts, chess sections of city parks and little radios that doormen would listen to, in between escorting residents in and out of rental properties.
These songs made city people go.
See, New Yorkers are always on their way somewhere; they don’t have time for interruptions. “Never Too Much,” the lead single from that debut album captured that plucky attitude and gave New Yorkers something to move to while getting from Point A to Avenue B.
Within the first 40 seconds of the visual, we get it. The track is pushing vibration from boom boxes, motivating people’s roller skate game, serving as the proper soundtrack to take in all the Central Park eye candy popping off in late summer and early fall; prime people-watching time in The City. Before Luther’s vocal hits his bouncing-scat-like timbre breezing through feelings welling up from first love, we are bombarded with two- to three-second scenarios of New Yorkers strutting, gliding, gallivanting, even my man on a ten-speed, in the middle of traffic, just bopping their heads to bassist Marcus Miller’s city thump.
Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, this is the scrambled version of disco in the Reagan era. R&B, dance music, and soul had to go through a rejuvenation, far enough from disco not to be teased or harassed about in the general populace, but still carry that strut, that gait, rep that funk, accent that culture in a new form. Never Too Much, whether Luther planned it that way or not, wasn’t just a debut for him; it was one of numerous leads from this new form of slick Black groove that did not want to be called disco.
Surrounding Vandross’ hit on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart, 16 other songs hit number one in 1981, all of which were produced in a new form. “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang with its poppish anthemic stomp, “Fantastic Voyage” by Lakeside dealing out squiggly basslines and liquid bouncy arrangements, “Burn Rubber on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)” by the Gap Band and “Don’t Stop the Music” by Yarbrough and Peoples both synthy funk jams at opposite tempos, but still catch a groove. Hence the phrase “post-disco” comes into fashion.
Meanwhile, all of Luther’s dues-paying—making his first television appearance on the inaugural season of Sesame Street, working on The Wiz on Broadway in ’72, being an expert background singer for Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand, singing his way on an elevator into an introduction to David Bowie that would later lead to his background vocals on “Young Americans” and touring that record. Releasing two under-the-radar disco records by the name of Luther and becoming the featured vocalist on post-disco group/ensemble Change’s “The Glow of Love” to be sampled by Janet Jackson and The Pendletons decades later—it all paid off in those brief and funky opening 40 seconds.
Musically, that intro establishes how much Vandross was a musician, an arbiter in detailing a new polished form of black music, and then an expert vocalist. He interspersed this lithe, giddy guitar line with Miller’s bass line in response and then added this piano chord progression to augment the musical conversation. He went back to the guitar-bass interplay with splashes of Miller using slap bass to get everyone’s attention. It’s pleasurable attacking; getting everyone’s ears focused on this melody-groove combo, so heads are snapping, and then Vandross enters with his vocals about new love. Cissy Houston, Whitney’s Mother, assisted with backing vocals as well, but the pattern of the delivery is reacting to everything already established in the funk-meets-R&B pop arrangement.
That’s a lot, I know. But it reflects what is in the culture already, and New Yorkers got it the first time. The rest of the country followed suit a couple of months later. But Miller, who met him as a teenager when both were in Roberta Flack’s band, knew Vandross had much more in his wheelhouse and wanted to be a part of it. From instances of Luther explaining to Miller, a self-described “hard-core musician, mostly jazz,” Vandross would detail the intricacies of Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, and Dionne Warwick, explaining to him exactly what they were doing.
“Most singers can’t do that because, although they’re very talented, they’re not technically knowledgeable about what they are doing.” But Vandross would explain the technique, which Miller identified as an a-ha moment. “And I was like, ‘Whoa, this is like playing an instrument. This is pretty incredible,’” he told NPR in 2010.
Of course, Vandross would go on to have success throughout his career, producing songs for Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston. In addition to co-writing “Fascination” for Bowie’s 1975 album Young Americans, he’d bank more on his balladry as time moved on. But he never produced another “Never Too Much,” which is a shame, for his arrangement IQ still to this day remains somewhat underappreciated until “Never Too Much” comes on at a boogie funk night, family function, retro video music program, or anywhere around the world, and then, people suddenly remember.
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