Singer-songwriter-producer who is just as famous for
his collaborations with other artists as he is for his own distinguished
solo career.In 1973, he moved
from his hometown of Akron, Ohio, to Los
Angeles, California,
with a band called Revelation Funk, which frequently opened for The Ohio
Players.Although the band
split up and most of the members moved back to Akron, James stayed behind and soon found
himself playing piano and performing backing vocals for Ray Charles, who showed
him the ropes.He also found
himself in demand as a session vocalist for the likes of Motown legend
Lamont Dozier.On a whim, he
cut a demo of a Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil song called "Just Once"
for Quincy Jones.To his
surprise and delight, Jones contacted him and asked him to record it and "One Hundred
Ways"
for an album he was working on called The
Dude.Both parties
benefited. " Just Once"
went to #17 and "One Hundred
Ways" went to #14 on the
Billboard pop chart.The album
went multi-platinum, and Ingram won a Grammy in his first outing as a lead
singer for Best R&B Vocal Performance.The two of them co-penned "P.Y.T.
(Pretty Young Thing)" which had the good fortune to be included on what
was to become the biggest-selling album ever, Michael Jackson's Thriller.(Ingram also played keyboards on the
track.)He now had the clout to
release his first solo album, It's
Your Night.The album went
gold, thanks in part to a couple of duets, "Yah Mo Be There"
with Michael McDonald and "How Do You Keep The Music Playing?"
with Patti Austin. " Yah
Mo Be There" went to #19 and won Ingram his second Grammy for Best
R&B Performance by a Group or Duo. "How Do You Keep The Music
Playing?" went to #45 and was featured in the movie Best Friends.In 1985, he appeared with a virtual
Who's Who of pop icons on the Jones-produced "We Are The World".A year later, he recorded the
Grammy-winning theme song to An
American Tail entitled "Somewhere Out There", with Linda Ronstadt.The song, penned by the lucky tandem of Mann and Weil, along with
James Horner, reached #2 on the Billboard pop chart and garnered an Oscar
nomination.Solo success
finally arrived in 1990 in the form of his first #1 hit, "I Don't
Have The Heart".It was
to be his last hit in the States, although he charted in the U.K. with two more collaborations, "SecretGarden", with Jones, El DeBarge, Al B. Sure and Barry White, and 1994's "The
Day I Fall In Love", with Dolly Parton,
which was featured in the film Beethoven's
2nd.The latter
was co-written by Ingram and Carole Bayer Sager, who also teamed up on "Look
What Love Has Done" from the 1995 Arnold Schwarnezegger
film, Junior.A greatest-hits package, Forever More:The Best of James Ingram, was
released in 1999.If his
recordings seem to be fewer and further between, there is good reason.He has been married to his childhood
sweetheart Debbie for thirty-one years and they have six children between
them, although he did manage to squeeze in an appearance on the reality TV
show Celebrity Duets in
2006.It seems everybody wants
to sing with James Ingram.
James Ingram
and Linda Ronstadt recordings
Somewhere Out
There (James Horner/Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil)
