The Baton Foundation
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@batonfoundation
Committed to serving the emotional, cultural and intellectual needs of Black boys through Saturday seminars, engaging programs, and research travel.
Remembering the great Sarah Vaughan, who passed away on this day in 1990.
Remembering Edwin Starr (Wednesday, January 21, 1942 — Wednesday, April 2, 2003) Born Charles Edwin Hatcher in Nashville, Tennessee, Edwin Starr was raised in Cleveland, where he began singing as a teenager and formed his first group, the Future Tones. After military service in Europe, he returned determined to make music his life, sang with Bill Doggett, and then moved into Detroit’s recording world, where his voice, forceful, gritty, and instantly recognizable, began cutting through the crowded soul field. His early solo rise came at Ric Tic with records such as “Agent Double-O-Soul,” “Stop Her on Sight (S.O.S.),” and “Headline News,” but his profile expanded further once Motown absorbed Ric Tic in 1968. “Twenty-Five Miles” became a major breakthrough, and then “War” made him immortal. Written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, “War” was first tied to @thetemptations, but Starr’s version gave it a harder edge and a public urgency that pushed it all the way to No. 1 in the United States and into the Top 10 in Britain. Yet, Starr did not remain trapped inside one moment. After Motown, he continued recording, scored the soundtrack for “Hell Up in Harlem,” and later found renewed chart success in disco with “Contact” and “H.A.P.P.Y. Radio.” His later career also mattered in Britain, where he became deeply respected on the northern soul scene and remained a working, visible performer for decades. Starr died on Wednesday, April 2, 2003, at his home near Nottingham, England, at age 61, of a heart attack, but even at the end of his life, he was still an active and valued performer, not merely a singer remembered for an old hit, but an artist who had kept earning his audience. Edwin Starr’s legacy rests in more than protest music, though “War” will always stand firmly at the center of it.
