Angela Bofill, a New York-bred singer whose sultry alto propelled a string of R&B hits within the late Seventies and early ’80s earlier than strokes derailed her profession within the 2000s, died on Thursday in Vallejo, Calif. She was 70.
Her loss of life, on the dwelling of her daughter, Shauna Bofill Vincent, was introduced in a social media put up by her supervisor, Wealthy Engel. He didn’t specify a trigger.
With a silky mix of Latin, jazz, adult-contemporary and soul, Ms. Bofill is greatest remembered for jazzy love songs like “This Time I’ll Be Sweeter” and funk-inflected pop numbers like “One thing About You.” Armed with a three-and-a-half-octave vary, her voice was “as cool as sherbet, creamy, delicately coloured, mildly flavored,” as Ariel Swartley wrote in Rolling Stone journal in 1979.
Beginning in 1978, Ms. Bofill logged six albums within the High 40 of the Billboard R&B charts, with 5 of them crossing over to the High 100 of the pop charts. She additionally scored seven High 40 R&B singles, together with “Angel of the Night time,” (1979) and “Too Powerful” (1983).
Angela Tomasa Bofill was born on Could 2, 1954, in New York Metropolis to a Puerto Rican mom and a Cuban father and grew up within the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, in Manhattan and within the West Bronx. She began writing songs as a toddler.
By her teenagers, she was already exhibiting off her vocal chops in a duo together with her sister Sandra and a gaggle known as the Puerto Rican Supremes, and in addition as a member of the celebrated All-Metropolis Refrain, a gaggle composed of prime high-school singers within the metropolis’s 5 boroughs.
After graduating from Hunter School Excessive Faculty in Manhattan in 1972, she created a buzz on town’s membership circuit, singing within the band of the long run Latin Grammy winner Richie Marrero.
She studied on the Hartford Conservatory in Connecticut and graduated with a bachelor’s diploma from the Manhattan Faculty of Music in 1976. Ms. Bofill labored with the Dance Theater of Harlem as a singer, author and arranger earlier than signing to GRP Information and releasing her critically acclaimed debut album, “Angie,” in 1978.
The album’s signature single, “This Time I’ll Be Sweeter,” a track beforehand recorded by Martha Reeves, Roberta Flack and others, rose to No. 23 on what was then often known as Billboard’s soul chart.
In a profile in The Day by day Information after the album’s launch, the columnist Pete Hamill singled out one observe, “Beneath the Moon and Over the Sky” — one in all 4 songs on the album that Ms. Bofill wrote or co-wrote — as “a metropolis dream: lyrical and defiant, with the congas rolling by way of the center, and the sounds of Santeria add a thread of the unearthly.”
“You dream this sort of music on subways,” he added.
On the time, Ms. Bofill was nonetheless dwelling within the West Bronx, the place the city decay spreading by way of the borough was all too obvious to her.
“It’s so unhappy,” she informed Mr. Hamill. “The place I used to stay, the identical constructing that was flourishing with individuals is now the pits. I used to go to a sweet retailer on the nook and hang around, and that’s gone. It seems to be like the traditional ruins of Rome.”
“Perhaps I will be a part of the answer,” she added. “Even the poorest household has a radio. Even the poorest household can have music.”
Hailed as a uncommon Latin singer to cross over to the R&B charts, Ms. Bofill continued her ascent. Her follow-up album, “Angel of the Night time” (1979), was an excellent greater vital and industrial success, fueled by the singles “What I Wouldn’t Do (For the Love of You)” and “I Attempt,” which she carried out on “The Tonight Present Starring Johnny Carson,” together with the title observe.
Clive Davis, the Arista Information founder, lured her to his label in 1981.
By the mid-Nineteen Eighties, Ms. Bofill was dwelling together with her husband, the nation music performer Rick Vincent, within the Napa Valley of California and elevating her child daughter. (The couple divorced in 1994; full details about survivors was not instantly out there).
In a 1985 interview with Ben Fong-Torres, a music author for The San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Bofill mentioned motherhood had not solely grounded her emotionally — “I’m extra assertive; I do know what I need extra” — but in addition affected her musical talents. “I gained three notes on my higher register,” she mentioned. “If I’d had a boy, I’d have grow to be a bass, who is aware of.”
She launched her final studio album, “Love in Gradual Movement,” in 1996. Her music profession ended when she had strokes in 2006 and 2007 that left her partly paralyzed and speech-impaired.
Nonetheless, Ms. Bofill hardly ever expressed remorse and tried to be lighthearted in speaking about her misfortunes in interviews. She recounted to The Washington Publish in 2011 how she had already wearied of the pains of the street earlier than her first stroke.
“I requested God, ‘Give me break,’” she recalled in disjointed syntax. “Inform the reality, I want a break. I’m going, going. No break very long time. Over 26 years, no break. I prayed someday, ‘God, I want a break.’ Bam! That’s when stroke hit.”
She added, “Subsequent time, God, perhaps one other type break.”
