NY Times, May 22, 2018
Reggie Lucas, Versatile Guitarist and Producer, Dies at 65
By Jon Caramanica

Reggie Lucas, a guitarist, songwriter and producer who was a member of 
Miles Davis’s electric band of the early and middle 1970s and who 
produced the majority of Madonna’s debut album, died on Saturday at a 
Manhattan hospital. He was 65.

The cause was advanced heart failure, his daughter, Lisa Lucas, said.

The versatile Mr. Lucas was present for some of the most divisive music 
of the 1970s and some of the most unifying music of the 1980s. He played 
on “On the Corner,” one of Mr. Davis’s most difficult and, in its day, 
critically derided albums. And he produced six of the eight songs on 
Madonna’s 1983 debut album, including the breakthrough hits “Lucky 
Star,” “Borderline” (which he also wrote) and “Burning Up.”

Reginald Grant Lucas was born on Feb. 25, 1953, in the Flushing 
neighborhood of Queens, to Ronald and Annie (Parham) Lucas. His father 
was a physician, his mother a teacher and administrator in the New York 
City public school system.

As a child he took piano lessons and, later, taught himself guitar. He 
attended the Bronx High School of Science, where he embraced the radical 
politics of the day, taking part in protests and writing articles in 
left-leaning student publications. He was featured in Robert Rossner’s 
book “The Year Without an Autumn: Portrait of a School in Crisis” 
(1969), which chronicled the 1968 New York City teacher strike and its 
fallout.

Mr. Lucas met Nile Rodgers, the future disco and pop producer who went 
on to co-found the band Chic, at a Vietnam War protest in Union Square 
when the two were both New York City high school students. They became 
lifelong friends.

After dropping out of Bronx Science, Mr. Lucas moved to Philadelphia, 
where he began playing in nightclubs and soon joined the band of the 
soul singer Billy Paul. By the time he was 18, he was accomplished 
enough to be invited to join Mr. Davis’s band.

He stayed for around three years. His playing can be heard on “On the 
Corner” — the signature release of Mr. Davis’s fully freaky period, 
reflecting influences as diverse as Sly Stone and Karlheinz Stockhausen 
— and on the live albums “Agharta,” “Pangaea” and “Dark Magus.”

“We were all writing and composing onstage — continuous collaborative 
compositions and improvisations,” Mr. Lucas said of his tenure with Mr. 
Davis in an interview for The Fader in 2016.

Among his colleagues in Mr. Davis’s band was the percussionist James 
Mtume. The two joined Roberta Flack’s band in 1976 — the same year Mr. 
Lucas released “Survival Themes,” his only solo album — and went on to 
become an in-demand R&B songwriting and production team in the late 
1970s. (Mr. Lucas was also, for a few years, a member of Mr. Mtume’s 
band, Mtume.)

Mr. Lucas and Mr. Mtume specialized in a kind of regal disco-adjacent 
R&B, including hits for Phyllis Hyman (“You Know How to Love Me”) and 
Ms. Flack (“The Closer I Get to You”). In 1981, they won a Grammy Award 
for best R&B song for writing the Stephanie Mills hit “Never Knew Love 
Like This Before.”

In 1982, Mr. Lucas began production work on the debut album of a then 
little-known singer, Madonna. Released in 1983, it would go on to be 
certified five times platinum and set the table for one of the most 
singular careers in modern pop. But he and Madonna had creative differences.

“She had her way of wanting to do things,” he told J. Randy 
Taraborrelli, the author of “Madonna: An Intimate Biography” (2001). 
“And I understood that. So we had to have a meeting of the minds, from 
time to time.” (Some of the songs Mr. Lucas produced were remixed to 
Madonna’s tastes by Jellybean Benitez.)

The album, Mr. Lucas told The Atlantic in a 2013 interview, was “a 
hybrid of her interests and mine”; Madonna was a nightclub denizen 
steeped in dance music and new wave, and Mr. Lucas was hired to bring 
R&B authority and texture. (Madonna’s early singles were marketed to 
black radio and played by influential R & B disc jockeys including 
Frankie Crocker.) He even used an introduction for “Borderline” similar 
to the one he had used on “Never Knew Love Like This Before.”

Mr. Lucas did not work with Madonna again; it was Nile Rodgers, his 
childhood friend, who took over production duties on her follow-up album.

The 1980s were a busy decade for Mr. Lucas. He released an album as part 
of an electro-funk trio, Sunfire, and he produced albums — some with Mr. 
Mtume, some on his own — for Lou Rawls, the Spinners, the Weather Girls, 
Rebbie Jackson and the Four Tops. He also opened a recording studio, 
Quantum Sound, in Jersey City.

In 1991, Mr. Lucas suffered a severe heart attack, and he had consistent 
heart problems in the years since. He continued to work on music for 
personal projects and briefly taught music at Montclair State University 
in New Jersey.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his mother, Annie 
Wolinsky; his wife, Leslie Lucas; his brother, Gregory; and a son, 
Julian. His first marriage ended in divorce.

So many great songs "in a kind of regal disco-adjacent R&B" style null.

 

This one of my faves from Stephanie Mills

 

More regal Disco- adjacent R & B from the same album as the 

classic "You Know How To Love Me" R.I.P. Reggie !

 

Edited May 23, 20187 yr by the yank

Some pedigree there,. Quality music all the way ,. Sad news 

Very sad indeed - 65 isn't much of an age to go these days. Got to laugh at these journos using their keyboard as a long stick with anything going near the dreaded disco, as opposed to "real" music.

Miles Davis's 70s groups had some big r&b hitters - Mtume, Lucas, Michael Henderson, and guitarist Pete Cosey who was part of the Chess set up during the 60s, including the Electric Mud Band. 

Reggie Lucas had his own website which is still up and running. However his one blog entry is worth posting here to give some insight into the man as well as reflecting on the relentless reduction of music education in UK state schools and what this is likely to mean for creativity in future:

MUSINGS INSPIRED BY BY JOANNE LIPMAN’S ARTICLE IN THE NY TIMES SUNDAY REVIEW OPINION SECTION 

“Is Music the Key to Success”, in Sunday’s NY Times 10/13/2013, explores provocative, intriguing territory. The question “about  serious musical training that seems to correlate with outsize success in other fields”  is anecdotally and intuitively obvious to me; it does. The article begs further exploration of the question it posits.  There are many fascinating links between musical training and ability and  personal achievement. Miles Davis, Tony Bennett, Donna Summers, Bob Dylan, and John Mellencamp are all legendary musicians with extraordinary secondary  talents as painters, for instance. Personally, I have seen countless instances where highly gifted musicians made  seemingly effortless transitions from music to  successful careers in a wide array of  professions. The consideration of all musical training and ability as a predictor of  achievement in life would broaden the scope and importance of the study this article almost demands be made. The entire spectrum of musical creativity needs to be included; all genres, as well as the role of improvisation, composition and performance should be considered. The tenacity and dedication required to acquire skill and recognition in music serves those who have attained them well in many other pursuits in life; these are transferable qualities. Success in music has never been a cakewalk. The competitive, transitory nature of careers in music has often discouraged many talented individuals from traveling down this path. The ritual of parents and teachers admonishing aspiring  young musicians to  develop “something to fall back on”, a safer professional skill, is as much with us today as it has ever been.   The most musically talented young people among us face the same agonizing, complex career decisions as their peers. The exceptional difficulty of music  at all levels , however, makes musicians particularly excellent candidates for the rigors of many other fields. This suggests that the acknowledgement and encouragement of musical ability  be a universal principle in our society. This  could result in both better music and a more harmonious, productive society. The misguided and unfortunate tendency of government at all levels to severely reduce or even eliminate funding for music and art programs in public school systems has been a tragic miscalculation. As this article points out, it cannot be ignored that highly significant numbers of our best and brightest have musical training and advanced abilities at both the developmental and professional stages of their personal histories. Music aptitude and training should stand alongside language and math skills in our early childhood and secondary educational institutions. Hopefully, the author of this article and other scholars and social scientists will explore these ideas more fully and bring scientific validation to the instincts and experiential  notions that so many of us already have.

 

 

"Mr. Lucas and Mr. Mtume specialized in a kind of regal disco-adjacent
R&B, including hits for Phyllis Hyman (“You Know How to Love Me”) and
Ms. Flack (“The Closer I Get to You”). In 1981, they won a Grammy Award
for best R&B song for writing the Stephanie Mills hit “Never Knew Love
Like This Before.”
 

As a threesome these tunes stand up against any that went before or after them.  I feel the need to pull some discs of the shelves when I get home tonight and celebrate such creativity.

 

A sad loss. A fascinating career.

Big memories of you know how to love me at Leeds Central. Great album also.

RIP.

 

Ed