Crawford first performed at club gigs from
Cincinnati to
Saint-Tropez, but made her name in the mid-1970s in New York, where she sang with jazzmen
George Benson and
Cannonball Adderley. She signed with
Columbia Records and released her first single, "Knock On Wood" / "If You Say the Word" in 1972. Adderley invited her to sing on his
album Big Man: The Legend Of John Henry (1975). In 1978, Crawford sang vocals on "Hoping Love Will Last", the opening song on side two of ''
Please Don't Touch!'', which was the second solo album by the former
Genesis guitarist
Steve Hackett. She led R&B veterans
The Crusaders on the transatlantic hit "
Street Life" (1979). A specially re-recorded version was featured in the
soundtrack for the films
''Sharky's Machine and
Jackie Brown'', and appeared in
commercials in the early 2000s. She later recorded for
Warner Bros. Records. Crawford was named the 'Most Outstanding Performer' at the 1980
Tokyo Music Festival. Her follow-up
solo efforts included "
One Day I'll Fly Away" (1980) and "
You Might Need Somebody" (1981), which became soul standards, and a cover of the
Tony Joe White song, popularised by
Brook Benton, "
Rainy Night in Georgia". The album
Secret Combination (1981) stayed on the
UK Albums Chart for sixty weeks, after which her profile dipped, despite a return to the UK
Top Ten with "
Almaz" in 1986. She has sung with Bootsy Collins,
Johnny Bristol,
Quincy Jones,
Al Jarreau,
Rick Springfield,
Katri Helena,
Michael Kamen,
Zucchero,
David Sanborn, Steve Hackett, the Spanish band
Presuntos Implicados, the Norwegian jazz-rock band
Lava and
Joe Sample amongst others. Randy Crawford was set to perform "The Farewell South Africa" tour in
Cape Town and
Pretoria in October 2018 but it was cancelled due to her suffering a stroke. This would have been Crawford's final performance prior to retiring. ==Discography==