Always & Forever: Luther's Legacy

MORRIS PLAINS, N.J. -- Holy cow, we have spent an entire day previewing Wednesday's estate sale of the late Luther Vandross, and we are numb from the fabulosity.

Do we begin with the 1961 Picasso charcoal, signed by the artist? The Gucci mink-and-alligator-trimmed belted three-quarter-length coat? The Versace black crocodile double-handled travel bag? The Pasha de Cartier 18-karat white gold and diamond wristwatch? Or the red fur cargo pants, made out of pony skin?

Should we mention that Max Szadek, his longtime assistant and curator of this sale, says that this warehouse holds less than 20 percent of Vandross's belongings, and that this doesn't include any of the really personal stuff?

The auction opens at 10 a.m. and will last two full days. The first item is a glass Lalique horse head and 1,031 items later, the auction closes with Luther's "Songs" leather tour jacket. You can get in on the Picasso action, so long as you can meet the opening bid of $80,000. The Cartier watch starts at $18,000. There's also lots of memorabilia -- gold records, sheet music to hit songs with his handwritten notes, even his driver's license and credit cards -- with opening bids starting as low as $25. But with thousands of fans from Tokyo to London signing up to bid, there's no telling the final price.

"The straight math is that all the items are worth $600,000 to $800,000, but when you factor in the Lutherphiles bidding, I just have no idea," says John Nye, co-owner of Dawson & Nye Auctioneers, which is conducting the sale. He's standing in the firm's two-story warehouse and showroom. It's decked out in leopard-print chairs, furniture, framed records, shoes, jewelry, fine china (with some pieces worth $10,000 each), rolling road cases and a Versace iridescent pink leather topcoat (complete with pink pinstriped pants!) that Vandross wore for a magazine photo shoot.

"His driver's license as an object isn't worth much, but it's Luther Vandross's and there's only one. I'm guessing it'll go in the hundreds," Nye says. "But here" -- he gestures to a pair of beaded denim pants on a hanger -- "these are the pants Sean Combs gave him to sing 'A House Is Not a Home' to Jennifer Lopez. She'd left him, and he got Luther to go sing that for her in a private performance, to try to get her back. How much will fans pay for that? Who knows?"

(Observation: J-Lo was so mad that not even Vandross could get her to come home. She went off and married Marc Anthony, and man, that's just cold.)

Vandross -- universally known as Luther -- died two years ago at 54 from complications of a stroke. He was one of the most beloved R&B singers in the past quarter-century. He was born on New York's Lower East Side and started out singing advertising jingles and backup for others (most notably on David Bowie's "Young Americans" album) and in a group (that's him on Chic's 1977 disco hit, "Dance, Dance, Dance") before he became his own force of nature.

His 1981 debut, "Never Too Much," went gold and he never looked back. "Power of Love." "The Night I Fell in Love." "Your Secret Love." Luther was so bad, he could take "Superstar," a song by the Carpenters -- one of the most squeaky-clean, bubble-gum groups in pop history -- and turn it into a five minute-plus marvel of torch balladry.

He won eight Grammy Awards, had 14 platinum albums and sold more than 25 million records. He recorded with everybody who mattered and was regarded by record executive Clive Davis as the medium's best pure vocalist. His shows were legendarily romantic, elegant and technically flawless.

Vandross had three houses -- in Beverly Hills, Manhattan and Greenwich, Conn. -- and more stuff than you can believe. He never married, had no children and never addressed persistent public curiosity about his sexual orientation. His personal struggles with diabetes and weight were the stuff of gossip columns -- he would balloon to more than 300 pounds and drop back down to 190 in six months -- but that was about the only window, other than staged photo shoots in one home or another, as to what his actual private life might be like.

So the crowd milling about on this day includes high-end antique dealers, appraising his collection of art deco silver, gawking fans hoping to find a souvenir, and family and friends come to reminisce over the hors d'oeuvres and the wine and cheese and fruit. As an early winter dark falls and the wind howls outside, the atmosphere is somewhere between a wake and a garage sale.