Billy Valentine

A seasoned R&B vocalist and composer residing in Los Angeles, Billy Valentine commands an effortless, expressive tenor whose multi-octave span sits squarely between Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye. His adaptable style merges classic soul with jazz, blues, funk, and pop. Together with his brother John, he founded the Valentine Brothers, who issued four albums and three charting singles from 1978 to 1987. His first solo album, Travelin' Light, arrived in 2006; the soul collection No Better Than This followed the next year. Brit Eyed Soul in 2017 delivered R&B renditions of U.K. artists, and in 2023 he unveiled the soul covers album Billy Valentine & the Universal Truth.

Born William Denham in West Virginia and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Valentine grew up in a household whose nightclub was staffed by his 12 siblings. His seven sisters rotated through the cash register and ticket booth while his five brothers served as stagehands, roadies, and members of the house band anchored by eldest brother Alvin, a master of the Hammond B-3. Alvin introduced the young Valentine to prime soul, R&B, rock, pop, and jazz recordings of the 1960s and 1970s. Deeply shaped by Otis Redding, Nat King Cole, and Carmen McCrae, Valentine gravitated toward narrative and message-driven material, internalizing these influences and training himself to sing with precision.

While still a teenager, Valentine fronted Young-Holt Unlimited on his first professional tour. In 1976 he and John relocated to Los Angeles to advance their music careers. The following year he joined the original national touring production of The Wiz as one of its principal orchestral voices and remained with the show for three years. He and John formed the Valentine Brothers during that period. Their debut single, “The Sound of Music,” appeared on Source in 1978, followed by a self-titled debut album in 1979. The second LP, First Take, released on Bridge, contained the Top 40 R&B singles “Money’s Too Tight (To Mention)” and “Let Me Be Close to You.” (Simply Red later covered the former and reached the Top Ten in 1987.) Their 1984 A&M album Have a Good Time included the charting single “Lonely Nights,” which entered the Top 30. Their final release, Picture This, came out on EMI in 1987.

Throughout the 1980s Valentine also supplied lead vocals for the score of the documentary Champions Forever, centered on Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and George Foreman. He produced Jesse Johnson’s single “Crazay” featuring Sly Stone. During the same decade he became a sought-after demo singer for producers and writers such as Gerry Goffin, Mark Isham, and the team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

In the early 1990s Valentine provided the singing voice for the lead vocalist in Robert Townsend’s film The Five Heartbeats. He entered a songwriting partnership with Bob Thiele Jr. and Phil Roy, co-authoring “My World” for Ray Charles. With Will Jennings he co-wrote three songs on the Neville Brothers’ album Family Groove.

Beyond studio work and songwriting, Valentine maintained a steady presence on the Los Angeles club circuit, performing regularly at now-defunct venues including Café Cordiale, Spazio, and the Vic. In the twenty-first century he headlined respected rooms such as the Baked Potato, Casa Del Mar Hotel, Shutters Hotel, and Herb Alpert’s Vibrato Grill Jazz, where he appeared monthly for more than eight years.

Valentine recorded the hit theme for the network series Boston Legal, starring William Shatner and James Spader, in 2004. After more than three decades in music he issued his debut solo album, Travelin’ Light, in 2006. Co-produced by pianist Stuart Elster, the recording presented Valentine with a piano trio interpreting jazz and Great American Songbook standards. In 2007 he demonstrated broader range on No Better Than This, a collection of uptown and contemporary soul originals and covers. Although the independently released albums achieved only modest sales, Valentine was already well known among musicians, producers, songwriters, agents, and Los Angeles nightlife regulars. In 2014 he performed Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” in an episode of Kurt Sutter’s Sons of Anarchy, one of the series’ most popular musical moments.

With Brit Eyed Soul in 2017, Valentine offered stylized reinterpretations of a dozen songs originating in the U.K., including material by the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Bee Gees, Culture Club, the Clash, and additional acts. Produced by Thomas Campbell for Cleopatra, the album received airplay on the West Coast and in Europe. Later that year he recorded the Celtic-inflected single “A Place to Find You” with pianist, keyboardist, and producer Jonathan Udell. In 2021 he released a deep-soul version of Jimmy McHugh’s 1935 composition “In the Mood for Love.” September 2022 brought the digital demo of “Hope in a Hopeless World,” co-written with Roy and Thiele Jr. for Pops Staples. The following month Valentine delivered an iconic reading of Curtis Mayfield’s “We Are the People Who Are Darker Than Blue.” Thiele issued the track as the inaugural release on the reactivated Flying Dutchman label, originally founded by his father more than forty years earlier and responsible for landmark recordings by Gil Scott-Heron, Gato Barbieri, Leon Thomas, and Ornette Coleman, among others. Thiele Jr. personally selected Valentine to relaunch the imprint. The single garnered airplay in select U.S. markets as well as from Gilles Peterson and other U.K. DJs. In March 2023 it appeared on Billy Valentine & the Universal Truth, an eight-track collection of classic protest soul and R&B songs by Stevie Wonder, Gaye, Scott-Heron, Prince, and others, delivered in Valentine’s signature emotive manner and supported by session players including Pino Palladino, Immanuel Wilkins, Theo Croker, Jeff Parker, Linda May Han Oh, and Abe Rounds.