The New Luther Vandross Releases Fourth Album
If there is one singer whose voice is reminiscent of the late great Luther Vandross, it has to be Marc Staggers.
The Washington, D.C. singer has just released his fourth album “Dream Catcher”. After many years in the Gospel music world, Staggers turned to Soul with his 2009 R&B debut album “Then And Now” and two years later with his remarkable “Keys To My Heart” album which won him many new fans and which features artists like Kirk Whalum and John Stoddard. He had a Gospel record out before that called “Message Of Hope”.
About his striking similarity to Luther Vandross, he said in an interview that Luther “by far has been my biggest influence. I’ve always admired his approach to singing and how he’s worked to have the music arranged to fit his voice and style. He had such a quality to his voice and his singing range was nothing like I’d ever heard from a male singer.”
To achieve his goals, Marc has called his brother Reggie again for help with recording, engineering, producing, mixing, and writing the record. The 10-song set starts with the floater “Bring Me Back” and the equally attractive “It’s All About You”. Several of the songs go the straight contemporary R&B route (“Fun”, “I Like The Way”), but the more Soul-oriented cuts here make the difference and suit him much better. Songs like the final track on the record, “I Wanna Spend My Life With You”, are the winners of this set and it is almost frightening to listen to Marc’s voice and realize that he has almost the same quality than his big influence. Staggers is no copy cat, though. It is just his natural voice. Stunning. Almost scary!
If Luther were still around, the music on this album is probably what he would sound like today. And Marc even covers one of Luther’s classic: “So Amazing” has a nice background vocal by Rashida Olley plus guitar by Doc Flowers and tenor sax by Brian Cunningham and really sounds like the real deal.
