Freddie Jackson, the velvet-voiced singer who turned slow jams into an art form with hits like "Rock Me Tonight," "You Are My Lady" and "Have You Ever Loved Somebody," died Monday at age 70. His social media accounts confirmed the death but did not list a cause.
"Freddie was more than a legendary voice," his family said in a statement. "He was a kind, generous soul who loved his fans, his family, his friends, and his music with everything he had. For decades he gave us the songs that became the soundtrack to our love stories, our celebrations, and our most treasured memories. That gift will live on forever." Funeral arrangements will be announced at a later date.
Born Oct. 2, 1957, in Harlem, Jackson got his start singing gospel before briefly fronting a West Coast group called Mystic Merlin and then returning to New York. Singer Melba Moore discovered him in a New York nightclub in 1982. "I said, 'My God, what a voice,'" she recalled in a 1985 interview with Jet. "I just screamed like everybody else." Moore hired Jackson as a backup singer and composer and helped him land a deal with Capitol Records; the two later teamed up for the Number One R&B hit "A Little Bit More."
Jackson's 1985 debut album, Rock Me Tonight, made him an instant star, spending 16 straight weeks atop Billboard's R&B chart on the strength of "Rock Me Tonight (For Old Time's Sake)," "You Are My Lady," "He'll Never Love You (Like I Do)" and "Love Is Just a Touch Away." The album also reached Number 10 on the Billboard 200, was later certified platinum, and earned him two Grammy nominations.
His next three albums — 1986's Just Like the First Time, 1988's Don't Let Love Slip Away and 1990's Do Me Again — each topped the R&B chart and went gold or platinum, producing Number One R&B singles including "Tasty Love," "Have You Ever Loved Somebody," "Jam Tonight," "Nice 'N' Slow" (which won him an American Music Award), "Hey Lover," "Love Me Down" and "Do Me Again." He also appeared in the film King of New York and in episodes of The Golden Girls and Family Matters.
Jackson's commercial dominance faded in the 1990s with the rise of New Jack Swing and hip-hop, genres he publicly said he disliked. Still, he kept releasing music, and as recently as 2010 his album For You climbed to Number 48 on Billboard's Top 100 R&B Albums chart. His cultural staying power was further cemented when Outkast's Big Boi referenced him in a verse on "So Fresh, So Clean," invoking Jackson's name as a symbol of effortless cool.
The New York Times called Jackson "one of black pop's most elegant performers, a singer who can turn a heartbreak ballad into a world view" in 1989, while Rolling Stone described him in 1987 as "the pillow-talking love man, the tender grind partner" in a comparison to Luther Vandross.
Reflecting on his music's purpose in that same 1989 Times interview, Jackson said: "My music is for people who like to hold hands in concert … it's intimate. With all the racial tension going on today, all the hate, my songs, which are about love, make more sense than ever. If people could diminish some of their hate, the chaos and trouble in life wouldn't be so strong."
Photo: Cloyne and District Historical Society from Cloyne, Canada, No restrictions, https://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/, via Wikimedia Commons
