Benjamin William Lattimore, known throughout the blues and Southern soul world simply as Latimore, died Saturday August 22 at the age of 86. The Boogie Report first confirmed the news. No cause of death has been released.
Born in Charleston, Tennessee in 1939, Latimore grew up in the church, picked up the piano young and eventually found his way to Miami, where he started backing other artists and recording for Henry Stone's Dade label in the mid-1960s.
His 1973 reworking of T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday" reached No. 27 on the R&B charts. Then came 1974.
"Let's Straighten It Out" is one of the most quietly powerful records of its decade, built on Latimore's electric piano, with a vocal delivery that is almost a spoken appeal from one partner to another: stop fighting, talk to me, let's fix this.
It went to No. 1 on the R&B charts and crossed over to pop audiences. In a just world it would have made him a household name. It made him blues royalty instead, which is arguably better.
He followed it with twelve additional R&B chart hits across the 1970s, including Top 5 entries "Keep the Home Fire Burnin'" and "Somethin' 'Bout 'Cha," and released more than two dozen albums over a career that ran across five decades.
The last album, released in 2013, was a tribute to Ray Charles. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2017.
One of his deep cuts, "Let Me Go" from the 1976 album It Ain't Where You've Been, has quietly become a streaming phenomenon, more than 25 million plays after TikTok discovered it.
He was 86 years old and was scheduled to perform at the Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival in September.
"The Blues and Southern Soul world has lost a true legend," one tribute read. "Rest in power, Benny Latimore."