His Starr café empire still enjoys success in and around Essex. Over the years, he released tracks on a variety of labels, including Avatar, Calibre, 10 Records, Motown (a return to his former label for a 1989 remix of "25 Miles"), Streetwave and Hippodrome. By now, he had joined the well-established disco boom and had further singles on 20th Century Records. Radio" was also a Top Ten hit in the UK, reaching #9 on the chart in mid-1979. "Contact" was the more successful of the two, peaking at #65 on the US pop charts, #13 on the R&B chart, #1 on the dance chart, and #6 on the UK Singles Chart. In 1979, Starr reappeared on the charts with a pair of disco hits, " (Eye-to-Eye) Contact" and " H.A.P.P.Y. Moving to England in 1973, Starr continued to record, most notably the song "Hell Up in Harlem" for the 1974 film Hell Up in Harlem, which was the sequel to Black Caesar, an earlier hit with a soundtrack by James Brown. Involved also featured another song of similar construction titled "Stop the War Now", which was a minor hit in its own right. "War" appeared on both of Starr's War & Peace album and its follow-up, Involved, produced by Norman Whitfield. It sold over three million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. Billboard charts, an anthem for the antiwar movement and a cultural milestone that continues to resound in movie soundtracks and hip hop music samples. Starr's intense vocals transformed a Temptations album track into a number one chart success, which spent three weeks in the top position on the U.S. The biggest hit of Starr's career, which cemented his reputation, was the Vietnam War protest song " War" (1970). His 1970 song "Time" also helped to establish him as a prominent artist on the Northern Soul scene. His early Ric-Tic hit "Stop Her On Sight (S.O.S.)" was reissued in Britain (with "Headline News" as its B-side) in 1968, and it performed better than the original release on the UK Chart, surpassing the original #35 and peaking at #11. Many of Starr's Ric-Tic songs (subsequently owned by Motown) like "Back Street" and "Headline News" became favored Northern Soul classics. It was when Motown's Berry Gordy became frustrated with smaller labels like Ric-Tic stealing some of the success of his company that he bought out the label. It peaked at #6 in both the Hot 100 and R&B Charts in 1969. At Motown he recorded a string of singles before enjoying an international success with "25 Miles", which he co-wrote with producers Johnny Bristol and Harvey Fuqua. While at Ric-Tic, he wrote the song, "Oh, How Happy", a #12 Billboard Hot 100 hit in 1966 for The Shades of Blue (he would go on to release a version of the song with Blinky in 1969) and sang lead for the Holidays on their #12 R&B hit, "I'll Love You Forever". Other early hits included "Headline News", "Back Street" and "S.O.S. The song which launched his career was "Agent Double-O-Soul" (1965), a reference to the James Bond films popular at the time. Starr lived in Detroit, Michigan, in the 1960s and recorded at first for the small Ric-Tic label, part of the Golden World recording company, and later for Motown Records (under the Gordy Records imprint), after the latter absorbed Ric-Tic in 1968. In 1957, Starr formed a doo-wop group, the Future Tones, and began his singing career. He and his cousins, soul singers Roger and Willie Hatcher, moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where they were raised. Starr's career shifted to the United Kingdom in the 1970s, where he continued to produce music, living there until his death.Ĭharles Edwin Hatcher was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1942. Besides "War", Starr's songs "25 Miles" and "Stop the War Now" were also major successes in the 1960s. Hawkins and Veasey of the group played on most of his early hits on the Ric Tic Label. He was backed by the band that would later become known as "Black Merda". Starr was born in Tennessee and raised in Ohio, and later lived in Detroit while singing for Ric Tic and Motown Records. Starr was famous for his Norman Whitfield-produced Motown singles of the 1970s, most notably the number one hit " War". Edwin Starr (born Charles Edwin Hatcher January 21, 1942 – April 2, 2003) was an American singer and songwriter.
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