BRUCE SUDANO - Biography

The songwriter's perspective. That's the heart of a Bruce Sudano performance. It's a particular kind of gift that's guided the Brooklyn born, Nashville-based artist's career from its inception. Even at a Park Avenue haunt like Feinstein's, where the perfectly laid out linens usually accompany Broadway and cabaret personalities, Bruce Sudano can bring a groove-oriented R&B song like "Music, Harmony and Rhythm" back to its acoustic DNA, retain its soul, and summon a crowd to dance in upholstered chairs.

That quality threads through his impressive body of work, and especially on his two most recent albums, Rainy Day Soul (2003) and Life and the Romantic (2009). In a career already defined by remarkable achievements, these two records have brought a renewed interest in his songwriting prowess and an ever-increasing awareness about his solo artistry. In 2004, he won New Music Weekly's (NMW) Award for "AC Artist of the Year," a category that matched him with Seal, John Mayer, and Josh Groban. Rainy Day Soul ushered Sudano to a whole new level of career renown as "Lé Imaginé Café," "Hey Chattie," and "Where Would I Be" made him a strong presence on the AC airwaves. AllMusic hailed the set as, "a shimmering excursion into singer/songwriter folk-pop-blues with more of an emphasis on structure and message than mainstream gloss."

Sudano followed this success with the 2009 release of Life and the Romantic, which continued to raise his profile when "It's Her Wedding Day" not only topped NMW's AC chart for nine weeks and but earned him a second NMW Award in 2010 for "Song of the Year." Vintage Guitar magazine singled out Sudano's "great songs and fine playing" while Icon Magazine favored the album's "satisfying mix of smooth jazz and melodic, introspective pop." SoulTracks called it "one of the most honest albums, musically and lyrically, to emerge in 2009."

The journey to critical acclaim and crowd-pleasing compositions started just across the Brooklyn Bridge in Flatbush during an era when street-corner harmonies saturated the neighborhood. Parallel to the advent of self-contained groups like The Beatles, Sudano joined a number of local bands as a guitarist and keyboard player throughout the mid-'60s. He landed a Top 20 pop hit as co-writer on "Ball of Fire" by Tommy James & the Shondells. Released on Morris Levy's Roulette Records, the single climbed to #19 in the autumn of 1969.

Months later, as a principle songwriter and member of Alive 'N Kicking, Sudano earned a Top 10 pop hit with "Tighter Tighter," a song written especially for the group by Tommy James. Produced by Bob King, the group's eponymous debut earned accolades from Billboard and notched the magazine's Top 200 album charts in 1970. Having already achieved a considerable amount of success by his early-twenties, Sudano departed Alive 'N Kicking and ventured out to the west coast.

After settling in Los Angeles, Sudano formed Brooklyn Dreams with Eddie Hokenson and Joe “Bean” Esposito, two fellow musicians and close friends from his days on the New York club circuit. The group signed an album deal with Jimmy Ienner's Millennium Records in mid-1977 and lent background vocals to Donna Summer's I Remember Yesterday (1977) on Casablanca Records, then on its ascent to becoming one of the top three major record companies of the late-'70s.

Produced by Skip Konte, Brooklyn Dreams (1977) showcased the trio's fusion of pop and soul. "Sad Eyes" and "Music, Harmony and Rhythm" found homes on both rock and R&B-formatted stations in the reigning radio markets across the country. Sudano wrote or co-wrote each of the album's ten songs, including "On the Corner," a moving character study informed by specific experiences from Sudano's life in Brooklyn, and "Street Dance," a rock-infused dance cut that remains one of the songwriter's personal favorites.

The release of Brooklyn Dreams yielded a three-year flurry of movie and television guest spots. The group appeared as The Planotones in American Hot Wax (1978) and wrote a song for the Casablanca-Motown production Thank God It's Friday (1978). Between rousing performances on The Midnight Special, American Bandstand, and Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, they toured with Donna Summer and recorded "Heaven Knows" for her chart-topping Live & More (1978) album. The song earned the group a gold single and a Top 5 hit in early-1979.

Shifting from Millennium to Casablanca, Brooklyn Dreams teamed with Bob Esty on their second album, Sleepless Nights (1979). The album incorporated a more stylized strain of pop on tracks like "Make It Last," "Fashion For Me," "Comin' Up the Hard Way," and "Street Man," a song that was featured in the telefilm Police Story: A Chance to Live (1978). Juergen Koppers, an engineer for Giorgio Moroder, directed the disco-driven sound on the group's third release, Joy Ride (1979), an album notable for the reggae-tinged "Daigo" and the R&B ballad "Love Love's Desire."

That same year, Bruce Sudano earned his first number one hit as co-writer of "Bad Girls," the title track to Donna Summer's multi-platinum double-album set that topped the pop, R&B, and disco charts. Sudano co-wrote three additional tracks on Bad Girls (1979), which would be nominated for an "Album of the Year" Grammy Award. His next number one hit arrived in a completely different milieu -- country. Penned with Donna Summer, "Starting Over Again" hit the summit of the country charts when Dolly Parton recorded the song for her Dolly Dolly Dolly (1980) album.

Following their work with Giorgio Moroder on the Foxes (1979) soundtrack, Brooklyn Dreams appeared in and recorded the title theme to the cult classic Hollywood Knights (1980) and delivered their final disc for Casablanca, Won't Let Go (1980). The group reoriented their sound towards radio-friendly pop-soul on the self-produced album, which included standout cuts like "Fallin' in Love" and "I Won't Let Go," later recorded by Tyrone Davis in 1994.

After Brooklyn Dreams amicably disbanded in 1980, Bruce Sudano recorded his first solo record Fugitive Kind (1981). Released on Millennium, the album revealed how Sudano's unique singing and songwriting style could effortlessly adapt from a group outfit to a solo effort. From the haunting "True Love" to the driving, anthemic "Pretenders" to the dusky embers of the title track, not to mention his own recording of "Starting Over Again," Sudano mastered the era's pop-rock vernacular on his debut.

Throughout the '80s, his songwriting credits surfaced well beyond the scope of his own recordings, including Musical Youth's "Incommunicado," the classic dance track "Animal" by 4-3-1 (featuring Maggie Ryder), "Won't Give It Away" by Alexis, and a number of compositions on albums by Donna Summer, including Sudano's self-penned "I'm a Rainbow," which furnished the title track of Summer's last collaboration with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte in 1981. He teamed with Joe "Bean" Esposito for an album-length collaboration on Capitol Records, Joe, Bruce & Second Avenue (1987), transferring some of the magic of Brooklyn Dreams to the pop landscape of the 1980s.

Michael Jackson and Jermaine Jackson united for a rare duet on Bruce Sudano's "Tell Me I'm Not Dreamin," a track co-written with Michael Omartian and Jay Gruska that topped the dance charts in 1984 and was later recorded by Robert Palmer on his platinum-selling Heavy Nova (1988) album. The Jackson affiliation extended further to a pair of songs Sudano co-wrote on Jermaine Jackson's Precious Moments (1986), and a writing credit on "The Art of Madness" for 2300 Jackson Street (1989) by The Jacksons, as well as the title track to the John Travolta-Jamie Lee Curtis blockbuster, Perfect (1985).

Fusing his songwriting, recording, and production talents, Bruce Sudano founded his own record company in 1990, Purple Heart Records. The label debuted with Erin Cruise, whose recording of "Cold Shower" (written and produced by Sudano) gave Purple Heart a Top 100 pop hit. As the decade progressed, Sudano wrote "Are You Ready For Me" with Eddie Hokenson for Robert Townsend's film, The Five Heartbeats (1991). He teamed with Donna Summer and Michael Omartian to pen the title track to Summer's Christmas Spirit (1994) while Reba McEntire brought "Starting Over Again" back to the country charts in 1996. Later, Contemporary Christian acts such as First Call, Point of Grace, Kathy Trocolli, and Natalie Grant also called upon Sudano's songwriting talents.

Bruce Sudano resumed his solo career in 2003 on Rainy Day Soul, an album that intimately echoed Sudano's personal experiences. Listeners of country, pop/rock, adult album alternative, and adult contemporary radio all gravitated towards Sudano's melodies, crystalizing his intuitive sense about crafting songs that cross musical categories.

With Life and the Romantic (2009), Sudano's songwriting remains as gripping as ever. A variety of moods and melodic sensibilities color the album's ten songs, whether the roots-inflected "Get Serious" or serene sway of "Beyond Forever." The recent success of "A Glass of Red and the Sunset" on smooth jazz stations and the award-winning achievements of "It's Her Wedding Day" on AC radio further underscore Sudano's career-long mutability between genres, foretelling paths that he has yet to explore in the new decade.

From Avenue I to Park Avenue, Bruce Sudano continues to set his unique perspectives to song. In life and music, he remains fearless and faithful to his muse.

-- Christian John Wikane