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Although initially pronounced dead, Rawls was rushed to the hospital and resuscitated. In 1958, Rawls was involved in a serious car accident while traveling with the Pilgrim Travelers and Sam Cooke. Rawls’ soaring lead vocal on the love song “Why” gives an indication of his emerging power as a soul soloist. During this same time, the quartet tried its hand at rock and roll, putting out a few Andex sides as the Travelers. Rawls’s tenure with the Pilgrim Travelers was captured on disc by Andex Records. After a stint in the Army, Rawls led the Chosen Gospel Singers’ 1957 Nashboro sides Walk with Me and Won’t Be Back before being recruited by the Pilgrim Travelers that same year. Most of the group’s Specialty sides, however, remained unissued until 1992. He is featured prominently on several songs from the group’s 1954 Specialty Records sessions, among them Ananais, I ’m Goin’ Back with Him and the Christmas-themed No Room in the Hotel. It was with them that Rawls made his first recordings. Like a star athlete, Rawls was a hot prospect for other quartets and it wasn’t long before he accepted an offer from the Los Angeles-based Chosen Gospel Singers. As a teenager, Rawls joined the Teenage Kings of Harmony and then the Holy Wonders, a gospel quartet that, at one time or another, included soul great Otis Clay and gospel star Spencer Taylor Jr. Wells Homes on the city’s South Side, Rawls attended Greater Mount Olive Baptist Church where he sang in the choir. The three-time Grammy Award winner with the unmistakable baritone voice was born on December 1, 1933, in Chicago, Illinois. The talented Rawls is also the singing voice of the animated fickle feline "Garfield".Although the world knows Lou Rawls as one of the smoothest soul singers of his generation, he started his career like so many popular artists do-singing for the church. South Wentworth Street in Chicago was renamed Lou Rawls Drive in his honor. He has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for black colleges and, every year, he sponsors a celebrity golf tournament in LA to raise money for the United Negro College Fund. During Christmas of 1983, he toured US bases in the Phillipines, Korea and Japan.
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Since 1980, he has presented a series of world wide concerts for American military bases that were co-sponsored by Anheuser Busch, the USO, and the US Dept. In the mid 70s, he joined the Anheuser Busch Brewery as a corporate spokesman. He went solo in 1964 and has won four Grammys. He went on to perform at a number of LA clubs and later made his debut at the Hollywood Bowl in 1959 with Dick Clark. Rawls was first noticed by Capitol Records producer Nick Benet after noticing his four octave range while performing at a Pandora's Los Angeles coffee shop. Sam Cooke was also in the automobile and was left uninjured.
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Lou remained in a coma for over five days and suffered a memory loss for several months. In 1958, he was involved in a serious auto accident that killed one and Rawls was pronounced dead on on the way to the hospital. He left the group in 1956 and joined the US Army and became a Sergeant with the Screaming Eagle Paratroopers. School and joined the touring gospel singing group, the Pilgrim Travelers.
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He and classmate, Sam Cooke, would harmonize in the school lavatory. Billy Eckstine and Arthur Prysock were only two of the best that Lou saw. He was mostly influenced by the Chicago Regal theatre where he had the opportunity to see the best in black entertainment. His first meeting with music was when he was seven years old, in a Baptist church choir. His father abandoned his family and Lou was raised by his grandmother. Rawls was born on 1st December 1933 in Chicago, Illinois.