Barry White, the soul singer whose voice was once described as sounding like melting caramel, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 58.
White, whose compositions were soundtracks for countless love affairs from the 1970s until the present day, died of kidney failure. He had long suffered from kidney disease and had been troubled for more than a decade by high blood pressure.
The singer died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles early yesterday morning. A spokesman for Mr White said that he had been conscious and in good spirits in the hours before his death.
Among Barry White's many hits, perhaps the best known were Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe, and his only British number one, You're The First, The Last, My Everything.
He often said that although his songs were regarded as the sexiest of the time in the 1970s he was more interested in the music. After his earlier popularity, White continued to sell records in large numbers and had recently published a compilation of greatest hits.
Yesterday music stations across America were playing his best-known compositions in tribute to the singer.
White also had a career as a music producer and was regarded as one of the key figures in soul and rhythm and blues over the last 30 years.
Born September 12, 1944, in Galveston, Texas, to a single mother, White and his brother, Darryl, were raised mainly in south central Los Angeles.
His lifelong love of music began in his teens singing in a Baptist church choir.
In 1990, White told Ebony magazine that his voice changed overnight from squeaky pre-adolescent to the rumbling bass that made him famous. He was jailed at 16 for stealing tyres, a punishment he said helped him to straighten out his life.
White discovered the female trio Love Unlimited - which included his future wife, Glodean James - and produced their million-selling 1972 single Walkin' in the Rain With the One I Love.
In 1973 White as vocalist returned with I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby, which topped the R&B chart and hit No 3 on the pop chart.
The next year White married James with whom he had four children. They divorced in 1988, but remained friends. White's brother Darryl was shot and killed in 1983. In his 1999 autobiography the singer said music likely spared him a similar fate.
His career waned in the 1980s but reignited with 1994 album The Icon Is Love, and his ballad Practice What You Preach became his first No 1 hit in 17 years. By the late 1990s, his songs featured on US TV show Ally McBeal on which he appeared.
His single Staying Power, from his 1999 album won White two Grammys.
White is survived by eight children, grandchildren, and his companion Catherine Denton.
Copyright 2003 guardian.co.uk
