Here and Now, Luther Resonates In Fan's Heart

Like my mother, who every few months reminds me that sexy crooner Billy Eckstine, prominent in the 1940s and '50s, "would have as big as Sinatra if he'd been white," black folks have long been suspicious of mainstream America's response to our beloved stars, in life and in death. I still remember being outraged in 1979 that Minnie Riperton's passing, at 31, was relegated to the inside pages of the newspaper for which I then wrote.

But the mainstream is melting. Many of Luther's most bereft fans are white -- and brown and yellow. Goodness knows Luther himself was colorblind when it came to taking ballads that were perfectly wonderful in their original versions and making them his own. I grew up adoring Karen Carpenter's poignant "Superstar" and Dionne Warwick's lovely "A House Is Not a Home."

Luther's buttery baritone transformed each into a different song entirely.

People in mourning need help. I would talk with a friend, but mine are useless because they miss Luther, too. So I called a shrink.

Darn. As luck would have it, Washington psychotherapist Diane Kern is a first-name-basis Luther fan, too.

"There was an innocence to his music," says Kern, whose favorite songs by the artist include "Superstar" and "Power of Love." Even so, "adults knew what he was talking about in 'If Only for One Night'. . . . Some of us who wouldn't think about having a one-night stand heard the way Luther put it, and it appealed to that part of us that has that fantasy."

Certain singers have "a charisma that gives us a sense of feeling connected to them, which helped us feel connected to others -- and to the first time we fell in love, and other experiences," she continues. "Luther spoke to the romantic part of me, to that part that wants to be in love. We feel a loss when somebody who can speak to that need dies. We didn't know him, but he connected us to something that's important and life-sustaining.

"When an artist is able to communicate that . . . he isn't really a stranger."

Luther, the romantic, would understand. When you've truly loved and lost, your house is not a home without your beloved inside it. When a singer whom you adored passes away -- perhaps to sing, finally, with a choir worthy of his gifts -- he isn't really gone.