If It Ain't High Volume It Ain't Loud Enuff!!! - Day

10:17PM - Lou Rawls Dies

01/06/2006 2:16 PM, E! Online
Joal Ryan

"People may not know what I'm doing," Lou Rawls once said, "but they know it's me."

Rawls, the Grammy-winning singer whose smoky growl was instantly recognizable whether on display in the disco era classic "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine," a Sam Cooke standard, or a Garfield cartoon, died Friday at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 72, his publicist's office said, and had been battling brain and lung cancer.

Rawls' illness became public fodder last month during a court battle with his wife. Nina Rawls told an Arizona judge that her husband didn't have long to live. From his hospital room in Los Angeles, Rawls told a newspaper, "Don't count me out, brother."

A prolific performer, Rawls' career extended well beyond the recording booth. He costarred in a TV series with David Hasselhoff (the Baywatch spinoff, Baywatch Nights), hosted annual telethons for the United Negro College Fund, hawked Anheuser Busch beer in commercials, and, for good measure, once visited Fantasy Island.

In short, Rawls put a lot of pop into the last 40 years of pop culture.

The career statistics, as compiled by Rawls' own Website, tell a similar story: More than 75 recorded albums, five gold-selling albums, one gold single (1976's "You'll Never Find..."), three Grammys and dozens of film and TV credits.

Rawls was born in Chicago. Multiple sources place his birth year at either 1935 or 1936, but by his publicist's count, he would have been born in 1933. (His birthday, all seem to agree, was Dec. 1.)

The career began in earnest in the late 1950s, when Rawls performed with Cooke as a member of a gospel group. During a tour, a bus crash severely injured the young Rawls. But it didn't kill him.

"I really got a new life out of that," Rawls said in a biography on his Website. "I saw a lot of reasons to live."

In 1962, Rawls emerged as a solo artist for Capitol Records--and a key collaborator of Cooke's. Turn up the volume on the Cooke hit "Bring It on Home to Me"--the "Yeahs" that answer Cooke's "Yeahs" are unmistakably those of Rawls.

Rawls became a hit-maker in his own right with collections such as Soulin', Lou Rawls Live! and, appropriately, Unmistakably Lou.

Starting in the 1980s, Rawls enjoyed a lucrative side career in animation. It began with crooning songs for the Garfield TV specials, and evolved into a steady gig as the voice of postal worker Harvey on the Nickelodeon series, Hey, Arnold!

Rawls was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2004, his wife said in court last month. The disease spread to his brain in 2005.

Though Lou Rawls had been seeking an annulment from his wife, whom he wed in 2004, Nina Rawls was said to have been at the hospital with her husband when he died.

On Rawls' Website Friday morning, there was not yet a mention of his passing--just a message of thanks from the then-ailing entertainer to his well wishers.

In the note, Rawls said he was thinking "good thoughts." And then he signed off: "Yeah, buddy--Lou"