"War" Singer Edwin Starr Dead

Soul singer Edwin Starr, who topped the charts in 1970 with his fiery, iconic, anti-war song "War," died of a heart attack yesterday at his home in Nottingham, England; he was sixty-one.

Starr was born Charles Hatcher on January 21, 1942 in Nashville, and he started his first band, the Future Tones, as a teenager. He did a two-year stint in the army between 1960 and 1962 before moving to Detroit. A music manager there heard his voice and told Hatcher he would be a star. He added an "R" to that description, took on his middle name Edwin, and his stage name was born.

Starr began recording in the mid-Sixties for the Detroit label Ric-Tic Records, and scored his first pop hit, "Agent Double-O Soul," in 1965, which reached as high as Number Twenty-one. "Twenty-five Miles," released five years later would reach as high as Number Six.

But it was "War," delivered in Starr's rough, staccato bursts of singing for which he was best known. The single was released in July 1970 and spent thirteen weeks on the charts, three at Number One. Vietnam would provide Starr with his next, and last, hit, "Stop the War Now," in January of the following year. He continued to fare well on the R&B charts in the Seventies, though his successes in the U.S. would never match the early portion of the decade.

In 1983, he relocated to England where he continued to be well received. Two years later, "War" was resurrected by Bruce Springsteen, who included a cover of the song on his Live 1975-1985 box set, and released it as a single with accompanying video. Springsteen revisited the song last month, launching his Australian tour with a cover version in response to U.S. military action against Iraq.

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Song Stories

“Tonight's the Night”

The Shirelles | 1960

The lead cut and title track from this girl group's debut album, "Tonight's the Night" was written by 19-year-old bandmember Shirley Owens, who sings lead, and producer Luther Dixon. The band from Passaic, New Jersey met in high school, first calling themselves the Pequellos. The song's frank thoughts about sexual and emotional surrender was racy for the time, but that didn't stop the Chiffons from cutting a similar version immediately after the original came out. "We were the first female group to write some of our own material," band member Beverly Lee recalls. "We did have some say-so in our writing."

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