Randy Crawford Biography

Randy Crawford (born Veronica Crawford, February 18, 1952, in Macon, Georgia), is an American jazz and R&B singer.

Crawford first performed at club gigs from Cincinnati to Saint-Tropez, but made her name in mid 1970s in New York, where she sang with jazzmen George Benson and Cannonball Adderley. Along the way she has sung with Bootsy Collins, Johnny Bristol, Quincy Jones, Al Jarreau, Joe Sample, and others.

She then led R&B veterans The Crusaders on the TransAtlantic big hit "Street Life" (1979). This song stayed atop the U.S. jazz chart for twenty weeks and has since become both a rare groove and disco classic. It was featured in the soundtrack for the film Sharky's Machine and appeared in commercials in the early 2000s. Her follow up solo efforts included "One Day I'll Fly Away" (1980, Grand Prize for Tokyo International Music Festival and UK #2); "You Might Need Somebody" (1981); and "Rainy Night in Georgia" (1981); which all became soul standards. The album, Secret Combination (1981) stayed on the Billboard album chart for sixty weeks, after which her profile dipped, despite a return to the Top Ten with "Almaz" in 1986.

Naked And True (1995) brought Crawford back to her roots: it included Benson's "Give Me The Night", and confirmed her soul heritage by featuring Funkadelicists Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell and The Fred Wesley Horns. She enjoyed her highest profile of the decade when rising starlet, Shola Ama, had a worldwide hit with her 1997 cover of "You Might Need Somebody".