The Pop Corporation

Bobby Caldwell is no longer with us, so with that, we’re going to send it out into the ether that we love him. His wife took to Twitter to confirm his passing, after he’d been ill for a number of years.

If you aren’t immediately aware of who Bobby Caldwell is, the first thing we’ll do is share the video for ‘What You Won’t Do For Love’, a blue-eyed soul masterpiece.

In ’78, ‘What You Won’t Do For Love’ was a hit – richly deserved after years grafting away on the circuit in Los Angeles.

It was the TK Records label in Miami that gave Bobby his shot, and let him loose in the studio, and any notion that some white guy in a fedora couldn’t have a soul hit, was quickly disproven and any worries floated away on the wave of cool, sophisticated jazz-pop. Incidentally, Caldwell was labelmates with Boz Scaggs, and that feels very cool and correct.

Caldwell wrote songs for other artists as well as for himself, and in later years, he found himself being sampled by crate-digger hip hop producers like J Dilla, and Notorious BIG, Aaliyah and 2Pac were amongst those who performed over Caldwell beats. Bobby also reappeared with Cool Uncle with Jessie Ware, showing that Bobby’s talents weren’t defined to just one scene or generation.

Bobby, you’ll be missed. What a legend.