Bobby Caldwell

Bobby Caldwell was an American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, born in Manhattan in 1951 and raised in Miami. He played rhythm guitar in Little Richard’s band in the early 1970s, then signed with TK Records in Miami, which released his self-titled debut in 1978. The label kept his face off the cover, a silhouette on a park bench, because, as he told NPR, it did not want it known that he was white. Its lead single, “What You Won’t Do for Love”, written with Alfons Kettner, reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became his signature song; Tupac Shakur later sampled it for “Do for Love” (1998). Caldwell also co-wrote “The Next Time I Fall”, a No. 1 for Peter Cetera and Amy Grant in 1986, and his last album, Cool Uncle (2015), was made with the producer Jack Splash. He died at home in March 2023, at 71.