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The big Easy
Frog turns into a prince as shy kid transforms into global superstar. By Mark Cooper.
Lionel Richie
“Hello, is it me you’re looking for?”: smash-hit songwriter and co-lead singer of the Commodores, Lionel Richie, The Brill Building, New York, 1976.
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Truly ★★★★
WILLIAM COLLINS. £25
NOT LONG before he was summarily handcuffed and drafted, the Commodores’ founder Michael Gilbert informed the band’s sax ‘holder’ and backing vocalist he would henceforth be singing Wichita Lineman in their set of Top 40 covers. While Harlem’s Summer of Soul, Woodstock and the Manson murders gripped the country, the self-doubting 20-year-old Lionel ‘Skeet’ Richie embraced the songwriting chops and suspended loneliness of Jimmy Webb’s classic. “You know, Skeet,” explained Gilbert, “I’ve always seen you as a crooner.”