Al Goodman, American soul singer (Ray, Goodman & Brown), died from heart failure.he was 67

Willie Albert "Al" Goodman was an American singer who performed as part of the musical trio Ray, Goodman & Brown died from heart failure.he was 67, a group that was earlier called the Moments and was known for their songs "Love on a Two-Way Street", "Look at Me (I'm in Love)" and "Special Lady".

(March 30, 1943 – July 26, 2010)

Goodman was born on March 30, 1943, in Jackson, Mississippi and started singing a cappella doo-wop while he was in high school. He headed to New York City at 19 and got a job with record producer Sylvia Robinson's at her studio in Englewood, New Jersey, where Robinson first noticed him while singing to himself on the job.^[1] Robinson assembled the group The Moments for her Stang Records label, pairing Goodman's bass with the falsettos of Billy Brown and Johnny Moore. One of their early songs, the ballad "Two-Way Street" reached number one on the Billboard R&B chart and hit third place on Billboard's pop chart. Months after their formation, Moore was replaced with Harry Ray. Together with Ray, The Moments went on to record such hits as "All I Have" and "Sexy Mama".^[2]

The Moments left Stang Records in 1979, citing creative differences, and signed up with Polydor Records as Ray, Goodman & Brown, as Stang Records owned the rights to the group's original name. With Polydor, the trio had a chart-topping R&B hit with "Special Lady". The Billboard Book of American Singing Groups credited the group as having "left a noticeable mark on contemporary soul music" with 28 songs making the R&B charts and 11 hits on the pop charts. Terry Stewart of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum credit them as "one of those transitional tight-harmony love-ballad groups from the '60s that paved the way out of the doo-wop era to become one of the leaders of R&B for nearly two decades".^[2]

The group has recorded many of their sings at the Sugar Hill Records studio in Englewood, which was gutted by a fire in 2002 that destroyed many of the master tapes of their recordings. Goodman said the fire cost him $500,000 saying "I just stood there and watched 30 or 40 years of my life go by".^[3]

A resident of Englewood, New Jersey, Goodman died at age 67 on July 26, 2010, of heart failure after undergoing surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, New Jersey.^[3] He was survived by his second wife, the former Henrietta Young, as well as by three daughters, three sons and a grandson. His earlier marriage to Alice Lewis ended in divorce^[2]

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