About Charlie Wilson
Charles Kent Wilson , also known as Uncle Charlie, is an American singer, musician, songwriter, and the former lead vocalist of The Gap Band. As a solo artist Wilson has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards and 11 NAACP Image Awards , received a 2009 Soul Train Icon Award, and was a recipient of a BMI Icon Award in 2005. In 2009 and 2020, he was named Billboard magazine's No. 1 Adult R&B Artist, and his song "There Goes My Baby" was named the No. 1 Urban Adult Song for 2009 in Billboard.
On June 30, 2013, BET honored Wilson with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Wilson is the national spokesman of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, where there is a Creativity Award in his name. The organization donates hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to cancer research across the United States.
Charlie Wilson was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on January 29, 1953; he was the son of the Reverend Oscar Wilson, a minister in the Church of God in Christ. With his older brother Ronnie and younger brother Robert, Wilson often sang in church before their father's Sunday sermons, accompanied on piano by their mother. He also sang in his junior high school's choir, which was a precursor to his musical career with the Gap Band and later his solo career. He attended high school at Booker T. Washington High School. He attended Langston University and would go on to become drum major in the Langston University Marching Pride.
From the start of his career, Charlie and his brothers, Robert and Ronnie, helped define and popularize an upbeat form of funk music that was infectious and lasting with their group The Gap Band. Magicians Holiday was the debut album by The Gap Band in 1974 on Shelter Records founded by Leon Russell and Denny Cordell. The band recorded at The Church Studio, a historic recording studio in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The group's songs such as "Outstanding", "Party Train", "Yearning for Your Love", "Burn Rubber on Me", "You Dropped a Bomb on Me", and "Oops Upside Your Head" are among their immense catalog and some of the most sampled songs in music history. After 15 albums the Gap Band announced their retirement in 2010.
In 1986, Wilson contributed vocals to Roger & Zapp's hit "Computer Love", a song that become a hit despite initial opposition from Wilson's label. There was a discussion between Roger Troutman and Wilson to create a music video for the song. Unfortunately, this did not come to fruition, due to opposition from the label that Wilson was signed to at the time. The fact that both singers were from rival bands played a hand in the opposition as well. However, the two maintained their close friendship, and would perform often the song together on stage. In 1989, Wilson worked with Eurythmics on their album We Too Are One, providing backing vocals on several tracks and co-writing the hit song "Revival". Wilson performed the song with the band on the British television chat show Wogan in August 1989. In 1998, Wilson performed on Mystikal's Ghetto Fabulous album.
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