Never Too Much

LUTHER VANDROSS

(Epic)

I shed a little tear when Luther died. He could do that to you. With his debut Never Too Much, the silk-voiced crooner took the idea of the sensitive male soul singer to new heights. Although Luther was always best at ballads, much of the material here is uptempo, with an urban, post-disco veneer. Far and away the disc's show-stopper, though, is the sensually drawn-out version of Bacharach/David's "A House is Not a Home."

This article appears in May 30 – Jun 5, 2007.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...