James Ingram

James Ingram was one of the preeminent R&B crooners of the '80s, and he subsequently found success in the realm of movie soundtracks. He was born in Akron, Ohio on February 16, 1952, and Ingram really got around before his 1982 breakthrough. He played in Ray Charles's band, played with the band Revelation Funk, and contributed vocals to records by Leon Haywood, Phyllis Hyman, Carl Carlton, and others. His first big break came when he sang on two hits from Quincy Jones's 1981 album The Dude: "One Hundred Ways" and "Just Once." Ingram's biggest success actually came before he even had a solo album out. In 1982 his duet with Patti Austin on "Baby, Come to Me," from her LP Every Home Should Have One, became a No. 1 hit. Naturally, this paved the way quite nicely for Ingram's first album under his own name, 1983's It's Your Night, which hit the R&B Top 10 and gave him a Top 20 pop single with "Yah Mo B There," featuring Michael McDonald. Though it would be three years before he put out another album of his own, but he enjoyed plenty of success in the interim. He co-wrote the Michael Jackson hit "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" with Quincy Jones, appeared on Donna Summer's "Mystery of Love," sand on the Kenny Rogers hit "What About Me," and took part in the all-star benefit song "We are the World." His second solo album, Never Felt So Good, fared poorly, though that same year he had a No. 2 hit duet with Linda Ronstadt on "Somewhere Out There" from the soundtrack to the film An American Tail, foreshadowing the direction his career would take in the '90s. His 1989 album It's Real gave Ingram a couple more hits with "I Don't Have the Heart" and the title track. Ingram released only one album in the '90s, but during that decade he had songs in films including City Slickers, Beethoven's 2nd, and Forget Paris. In 2008 he released Stand, his first album in 15 years.  It would be his last; Ingram died on January 29, 2019 of Parkinson's Disease at the age of 66.