Edward "Eddie" Levert (born June 16, 1942) is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 singer, and is the lead vocalist of the soul

Soul music

Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...

/funk

Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

/R&B  vocal group, The O'Jays

The O'Jays

The O'Jays are an American R&B group from Canton, Ohio, formed in 1963 and originally consisting of Eddie Levert , Walter Williams , William Powell , Bobby Massey and Bill Isles. The O'Jays were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2004, and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005...

.

Levert was born in Bessemer, Alabama

Bessemer, Alabama

Bessemer is a city outside of Birmingham in Jefferson County, Alabama, United States eight miles west of Hoover. The population was 29,672 at the 2000 Census, but by the 2009 U.S...

, but was raised in Canton

Canton, Ohio

Canton is the county seat of Stark County in northeastern Ohio, approximately south of Akron and south of Cleveland.The City of Caton is the largest incorporated area within the Canton-Massillon Metropolitan Statistical Area...

, Ohio

Ohio

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

. While attending high school

High school

High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....

, he met buddies Walter Williams, Bill Isles, Bobby Massey, and William Powell. They were motivated to sing after seeing a performance from Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers

The Teenagers

The Teenagers are an American integrated doo wop group, most noted for being one of rock music's earliest successes, presented to international audiences by DJ Alan Freed...

. They formed in 1958.

Career with the O'Jays

The O'Jays were originally known as The Triumphs and The Mascots. They were officially known as The O'Jays after they got their name from DJ

Disc jockey

A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

 Eddie O'Jay. Their first big hit  was "Lonely Drifter" which was lifted off their debut album

Album

An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

 Comin Through. The O'Jays are mainly known by their hits "Back Stabbers," "Love Train" and "For the Love of Money."

He starred and performed in the movie (The Fighting Temptations

The Fighting Temptations

The Fighting Temptations is a 2003 American musical dramedy film produced by Paramount Pictures and MTV Films. It stars Cuba Gooding, Jr. as the film's protagonist as he attempts to revive a church choir in order to enter a gospel competition with the help of a beautiful lounge singer with whom he...

) and performed the song He Still Loves Me.

In 2009, he and his group won the BET Lifetime Achievement Award.

Personal life

Levert is the father of R&B

Rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...

 singers Gerald Levert

Gerald Levert

Gerald Levert was an American R&B singer. Gerald Levert sang with his brother, Sean Levert, and friend Marc Gordon in the R&B trio LeVert. He was also a part of LSG, an R&B supergroup comprising Keith Sweat, Johnny Gill, and Levert...

, who died on November 10, 2006, Sean Levert

Sean Levert

-Biography:Levert was born in Cleveland, Ohio and is the son of Eddie Levert, the lead singer of The O'Jays. He formed the trio LeVert with older brother Gerald Levert and childhood friend Marc Gordon; together they scored several smash hits on the U.S. R&B charts in the 1980s and early 1990s...

, who died on March 30, 2008 and Eddie Levert Jr., CEO of Levert Entertainment Group, a Music label headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. The relationships between Eddie Sr. and Gerald became a subject of a book, I Got Your Back: A Father and Son Keep It Real about Love, Fatherhood, Family, and Friendship issued in 2007 (ISBN 0767927443, ISBN 0767927605).