Lionel Richie

Lionel Richie

Active - 1978 - 2019  |   Born - Jun 20, 1949 in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States  |   Genres - Music, Comedy, Romance

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Factsheet

  • Childhood home was actually on the Tuskegee University campus.
  • Grandfather had worked with the college's founder, Booker T. Washington.
  • Hoped at one point to become an Episcopal minister.
  • Taught himself to play the piano by ear.
  • First called the Mystics, his band became the Commodores after the word was picked at random out of a dictionary.
  • The Commodores lost all their equipment to van thieves on a 1969 trip to New York.
  • The Commodores opened for the Jackson Five on many tours in the early 1970s.
  • Richie's compositions rose to the No. 1 position on the U.S. pop singles chart at least once in every year between 1977 and 1985.
  • In 1985, composed (with Michael Jackson) and recorded "We Are the World," a recording benefiting African famine relief.
  • Received the George and Ira Gershwin Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.
  • Has raised millions of dollars for the benefit of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
  • In 2010, he took part in a remix of "We Are the World" (featuring the likes of Justin Bieber, Pink and Lady Gaga) for the benefit of those hit by an earthquake in Haiti.