The Wind Beneath Him: Remembering Gerald Levert
By Mark Anthony Neal

When Gerald Levert died of cardiac arrest on November 10th, mainstream media
was well behind the curve in reporting the story. Instead it was left up to
so-called second-tier media outlets like BET.com, BlackAmericaWeb.com and
Electronic Urban Report (EUR) to deliver the shocking news to many of
Levert’s fans. I imagine that for much of mainstream America, Gerald Levert
was simply an “R&B” singer in a world where “R&B” singers rate little
interest (unless they are charged with sexually molesting underage girls).

In contrast, seminal New York urban stations such WBLS and WRKS and many
others throughout the country devoted hours of programming to Levert’s
memory, as part tribute and recognition of the fact that Levert always
valued their presence and willingness to support his artistry. In reality,
had Levert waited on mainstream recognition of his work, his music might
have never been heard. As so many of his younger peers craved mainstream
visibility and the celebrity driven surveillance that came with it, Gerald
Levert was seemingly content with simply being a “R&B” singer.

Gerald Levert had little choice but to be simply a “R&B” singer. Levert’s
father Eddie Levert Sr., a founding member of The O’Jays, is a mythic
reminder of an era when the “Soul Man” was the peer to the “Race Man”.
Indeed in the mid-1970s when The O’Jays were at their artistic and
commercial peak with recordings such as “For the Love of Money”, “Living for
the Weekend” and “I Love Music,” one could argue that the voices of Eddie
Levert, Sr. and his longtime partner Walter Williams were more relevant in
many households across Black America than some of the popular political
agitators of the time. This was the context in which a young Gerald Levert
was introduced to Soul music and its more corporatized offspring, R&B.
Understandably when Gerald Levert and his brother Sean decided to pursue
careers in the recording industry, as part of the trio Levert which they
formed with Marc Gordon, they did so within the musical conventions of their
peers. Tracks like “Casanova”, “(Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop) Goes My Love” and “Just
Coolin’” (with Heavy D), were firmly within the New Jack Swing tradition
that linked the urbane R&B of the early 1980s, which the sample-based
hip-hop inflected R&B of the mid-1990s.

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