James Ingram ready to rock Kenya

In the early 1970s an 18-year-old young man recorded a demo tape for a publishing company in the hope of impressing someone.

It did. A producer at the firm decided to send the tape over to the legendary producer Quincy Jones and as they say the rest is history. James Ingram was in the game.

He had paid $50 to record the song Just Once, which brought him to Quincy. “This is the song that brought James Ingram and me together,” writes Quincy Jones on the CD liner notes for his compilation album, From Q with Love.

"The words and the music put me on my knees, but the singer on the demo absolutely laid me out on the floor. I could not wait to get on the phone to ask for the name of this young man.”

The phone call found Ingram busy in his workroom and the story goes that it was his wife, Debbie, who pulled him out by saying, “I think this is one call you will want to take.”

Ingram’s career started in the mid 1970s, as a member of the band Revelation Funk, but the group split. He moved to work as a pianist for Ray Charles.

He never had much confidence in his singing ability and always regarded his voice as having, what he called, a “whisky sound”.

“I told him that he should not change a thing,” writes Quincy Jones. “It was that kind of whiskey that went down the smoothest for me.”

His performance on the Jones album Dude earned him a Grammy Award in 1982, for Best R&B vocal performance. He performed the song at the ceremony with the great producer himself conducting the band.

Ingram was to write songs for other artists, as well, with one of the most famous being P.Y.T for Micheal Jackson’s Thriller album.

James Ingram was introduced to Kenyan air waves in 1983, with his album It’s your Night. Larry Wambua, then a DJ on what was known as the General Service and now KBC, recalls the album’s impact.

“James Ingram was a big favourite on radio because he had plenty of love songs which we played on the night show, Late Date, but there were also upbeat songs like Yah Mo Be There, which was popular on the request programme Yours for the Asking,” he said in an interview with the Business Daily.

Indeed, a glance at the Top 10 songs compiled by Nairobi’s Assanands Music Store, in 1983, shows that ‘It’s Your Night’ dominated sales and air play for months that year.

Following the success of his debut album, Ingram was back in the studio with songstress Patti Austin, Quincy Jones granddaughter, recording Baby Come to Me.

“This was the first time I heard and felt the magic between James Ingram and Patti,” writes Jones. That single was only replaced at the top of US pop charts, by Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean, from the album Thriller.

Mr Poet

Ingram’s career has been intertwined with Quincy Jones over decades. In 1985, he was part of the 45 musicians, under the banner USA for Africa, who recorded the charity single We are the World for famine relief in Ethiopia.

In his 1989 album, Back on the Block, Jones conceived what he called “a musical one-act play” with four characters: Barry White as the Father Figure; Al B Sure as Mr Sensitive; El Debarge as Mr Erotic Animal and James Ingram as Mr Poet.

It is the latter who sings the memorable line “I know a melody that we could sing together” in the sensual ballad Secret Garden, a portrayal of four different parts of one man seducing a woman.

Having worked generations of the world’s greatest singers, from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson, Jones rates Ingram as one of his favourite vocalists of all time.

As if to prove that, the CD compilation of some of the best songs he has produced, in over six decades, have featured Ingram: Secret Garden, Baby Come to me, How do you keep the music playing and Just Once.

Despite having his roots firmly in R&B, Ingram has easily navigated across the genres, recording “What about me” with country stars like Kenny Rogers and Kim Carnes, in 1984. Two years later, he collaborated with rock icon Linda Ronstadt on Somewhere out there. The song won a Grammy Award.

In the 1993 he worked with Dolly Parton on the song The Day I Fall in Love for the film Beethoven’s 2nd, which was nominated for Best original song at the 1994 Grammys.

Nairobi

After a 15-year hiatus, Ingram released his last album Stand (In the light), in 2009, a collection of inspirational songs influenced by his upbringing by a father who was a church deacon.

The album includes the old favourite Yah Mo Be There almost as if to show his new fans that he was always rooted in gospel, from the start of his career.

Though he cuts a very different figure from the man who charmed many hearts for most of the 1980s and part of the 90s, especially with the bald hairstyle, the quality of James Ingram’s voice probably sounds even richer at the age of 60.

Strange, when you remember that he was a reluctant singer who never thought much of the voice that has come to be adored by millions in different corners of the world.

He performs Saturday night at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani.