Also in 1962, he was a background vocalist on Sam Cooke’s hit single for RCA, Bring It on Home to Me. He signed with Capitol Records in 1962, where he issued an album with the Pilgrim Travelers and a string of secular singles as a soloist, starting with 1966’s Love is a Hurtin’ Thing, which hit number one on the R&B chart, and Dead End Street and Show Business (both from 1967). It took him months to recuperate and regain his memory, but by 1959 he was back on the road singing. 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.
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.
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