Lionel Richie: A Would-Be Priest, Four Throat Surgeries and Baghdad Fans

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Lionel Richie was born in June 1949 in Tuskegee, Alabama and grew up on the Tuskegee Institute campus, in a grandparents' home the episode says was a gift from Booker T. Washington. He returned to Tuskegee on a tennis scholarship, studied economics, played in the Marching Crimson Pipers and considered divinity school before deciding he was not priest material. He could not read or write music. In 1968 he became singer and saxophonist of the Commodores, who opened for the Jackson 5 and played funk like Machine Gun and Brick House before his ballads Easy, Three Times a Lady and Sail On moved the band's center toward him.

Outside the group he co-wrote Happy People for the Temptations in 1974, wrote Lady for Kenny Rogers in 1980 and sang Endless Love with Diana Ross. His 1982 solo debut sold over four million copies and Can't Slow Down sold over 20 million and won Album of the Year. After Dancing on the Ceiling in 1986 he stopped recording for a decade amid a public divorce from Brenda Harvey and four vocal cord surgeries, until a holistic doctor traced the damage to acid reflux from late-night eating on tour. The 2012 country duets album Tuskegee became his first US No. 1 album since 1986.

Lady also became a Latin club hit through a version by salsa romantica singer La Palabra.
He performed All Night Long at the closing ceremony of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
He co-wrote We Are the World with Michael Jackson and won an Academy Award for Say You, Say Me.
He played Glastonbury in 2015 to well over 100,000 people and joined American Idol as a judge in 2018.
A 2006 ABC News report described Iraqis playing All Night Long in Baghdad streets during the 2003 invasion.

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