Bobby Sharp born 26 November 1924

Bobby Sharp (November 26, 1924 - January 28, 2013) was an American pianist, singer who had a long songwriting career highlighted by his 1961 hit, “Unchain My Heart." 

Robert Sharp Jr., was born in Topeka, Kansas. He spent his childhood in Lawrence, Kansas, before moving to Los Angeles, where he lived with his grandparents. His parents, Louis and Eva, had gone to New York to pursue career dreams they thought could be realized only in that city, things being what they were in the face of the Depression. His father, a concert tenor, won small roles on Broadway and at the famed Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, the same stage where Orson Welles had produced Macbeth with an all black cast. His mother became an athlete, active in the National Urban League Guild and a lifelong friend of its founder, Mollie Moon. Then in 1936, at age 12, Bobby joined his parents in New York. 

Thei apartment on Edgecombe Avenue on Harlem's Sugar Hill was a meeting place for prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance; these included Walter White, the founder of the civil rights organization NAACP, Roy Wilkins, longtime NAACP chairman, and Aaron Douglas, an African-American artist also from Topeka. Duke Ellington was a down-the-street neighbor.Poet Langston Hughes, Eddie Matthews, who performed baritone in Porgy and Bess, and Thurgood Marshall, then a young lawyer, all were part of young Bobby's extended family. His mother loved to entertain, and with only a hotplate and a few utensils, she somehow managed to host large parties for everyone in their two-room apartment. In those days, Depression or not, people would always get up and sing, and those songs got Bobby interested in music. 

Bobby joined the Army in 1943, served in the 372nd Infantry regiment stationed in New York City and Ft. Breckenridge, Ky., and after getting out of the service, used the GI bill to study music, first at the Greenwich House Music school (for the fundamentals) and then at the Manhattan School of Music (for harmony, theory, and piano). His impetus for getting serious about learning the craft had come from family friend and famous bandleader Sy Oliver, who was an important mentor in this phase. Bobby also played several gigs with jazz and big band greats Benny Carter and Jimmie Lunceford. 

                                  

For the next few years, Bobby ran up and down Broadway and Tin Pan Alley, trying to get songs published. He hung out in bars like Harlem landmark Small’s Paradise, meeting other hungry songwriters. He read books and poems, even the thesaurus, as he put down tune after tune. Then in 1956, he recorded his first commercial success, “Baby Girl of Mine,” which was later covered by Ruth Brown. He recorded the song Last Night in the Moonlight under his own name for the small label Destiny. 

Along the way Bobby worked with a score of famous songwriters—Charlie Singleton, Leslie McFarland, Jerry Teifer, Aaron Schroeder, Mel Glazer, and Dan and Marvin Fisher. Among his many friendships was the one he struck up with novelist James Baldwin when he wrote the song Blues for Mr. Charlie, after seeing Baldwin’s searing Broadway play about race relations in America. 

During the 50’s and 60’s his tunes were recorded by such leading artists as Sarah Vaughn and Sammy Davis, Jr. and, of course, Ray Charles. In 1961, he recorded the first version of Sharp's best-known song, Unchain My Heart. Although Bobby had sold all the rights to “Unchain" in 1963 to Teddy Powell for just $1,000, he didn't learn till later that he'd been cheated out of royalties from the song. He sued, and seven years later, the courts awarded him judgement. Typical of his generosity, he included a sizable sum from the court settlement to the friend who had tipped him off about the stolen royalties. In 1988 he renewed the copyright for “Unchain My Heart” in his own name; one year after Joe Cocker reignited its hit status. 

By this time, Bobby had more or less retired from the songwriting business; he'd moved to Alameda, California in 1980 after an earlier short stay in Lafayette, and began working as a substance abuse counselor at the Westside Community Mental Health Center in San Francisco. He retired from counseling in 1988 and didn't give much thought to the music business for a number of years following.

But then in 2004, he got back in the music business again when he collaborated with jazz singer Natasha Miller, who recorded an album of his songs, I Had a Feelin': The Bobby Sharp Songbook. In 2005, he briefly returned to the music business to present his debut album The Fantasy Sessions at the age of 81, on which he played the piano and sang his own songs.  Sharp died at eighty-eight years old at a hospital in Oakland, California on January 28, 2013. 

(Edited from All About Jazz & Wikipedia) (Not to be confused with the pop and rock singer Bobby Sharp from Texas who recorded for Dee Jay, Ventural and Epic during 1964-1965).