Edwin Starr

Charles Edwin Hatcher January 21 1942 April 2 2003 known by his stage name Edwin Starr was an American singer and songwriter He is best remembered for his Norman Whitfieldproduced Motown singles of the 1970s most notably the numberone hit War Born in Nashville and raised in Cleveland Ohio he later lived in Detroit while singing for RicTic and Motown Records He was backed by the band that became known as Black Merda Hawkins and Veasey of the group played on most of his early hits on the Ric Tic Label Starrs songs TwentyFive Miles and Stop the War Now were also major successes in 1969 and 1971 respectively In the 1970s Starr moved to England where he continued to produce music and resided until his death Charles Edwin Hatcher was born in Nashville Tennessee on January 21 1942 He and his cousins soul singers Roger and Willie Hatcher moved to Cleveland Ohio where they were raised In 1957 Hatcher formed a doowop group the Future Tones and began his singing career However after just one single he was called up for military service in the United States Army for three years where he was posted to Europe following the end of his service he decided to make music his career and joined the musical group of Bill Doggett Hatcher adopted the name Edwin Starr at the suggestion of Doggetts manager Don Briggs and made his solo recording debut in 1965 for the Detroit record company RicTic The song that launched his career was Agent DoubleOSoul 1965 a reference to the James Bond films already popular at the time Other early hits included Headline News Back Street and Stop Her on Sight SOS While at RicTic he wrote the song Oh How Happy a number 12 Billboard Hot 100 hit in 1966 for The Shades of Blue he would go on to release a version of the song with Blinky in 1969 and sang lead for the Holidays on their number 12 RB hit Ill Love You Forever At Motown he recorded a string of singles before enjoying international success with TwentyFive Miles which he cowrote with producers Johnny Bristol and Harvey Fuqua It peaked at number 6 in both the Hot 100 and RB Charts in 1969 It was when Motowns Berry Gordy became frustrated with smaller labels like RicTic stealing some of the success of his company that he bought out the label Many of Starrs RicTic songs subsequently owned by Motown like Back Street and Headline News became favored northern soul classics His early RicTic hit Stop Her on Sight SOS was reissued in Britain with Headline News as its Bside in 1968 and it performed better than the original release on the UK Chart surpassing the original number 35 and peaking at number 11 His 1970 song Time also helped to establish him as a prominent artist on the northern soul scene Source Article Edwin Starr from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30