Angela Bofill, R&B Hitmaker With a Silky Voice, Dies at 70

Bofill is best remembered for her silky blend of Latin, jazz, adult-contemporary, and soul, producing jazzy love songs like “This Time I’ll Be Sweeter” and funk-inflected pop numbers like “Something About You.” Her voice, described by Ariel Swartley in Rolling Stone magazine in 1979 as “cool as sherbet, creamy, delicately colored, mildly flavored,” spanned three and a half octaves.

Starting in 1978, Bofill released six albums that reached the Top 40 of the Billboard R&B charts, with five crossing over to the Top 100 of the pop charts. She also had seven Top 40 R&B singles, including “Angel of the Night” (1979) and “Too Tough” (1983).

Angela Tomasa Bofill was born on May 2, 1954, in New York City to a Puerto Rican mother and a Cuban father. She grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the West Bronx. From a young age, she showed musical talent, performing in a duo with her sister Sandra, a group called the Puerto Rican Supremes, and as part of the prestigious All-City Chorus, composed of top high school singers from New York City’s five boroughs. After graduating from Hunter College High School in 1972, she made a name for herself on the city’s club circuit, singing with the band of future Latin Grammy winner Richie Marrero.

Bofill studied at the Hartford Conservatory in Connecticut and earned a bachelor’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music in 1976. She worked with the Dance Theater of Harlem as a singer, writer, and arranger before signing with GRP Records. Her critically acclaimed debut album, “Angie,” was released in 1978. The album’s signature single, “This Time I’ll Be Sweeter,” rose to No. 23 on what was then known as Billboard’s soul chart. In a profile in The Daily News, columnist Pete Hamill praised the track “Under the Moon and Over the Sky” as “a city dream: lyrical and defiant, with the congas rolling through the middle, and the sounds of Santeria add a thread of the unearthly.”

Bofill expressed sadness over the urban decay in her West Bronx neighborhood but believed in the power of music to uplift. “Even the poorest family has a radio. Even the poorest family can have music,” she said.

As one of the rare Latin singers to cross over to the R&B charts, Bofill’s career continued to rise. Her follow-up album, “Angel of the Night” (1979), achieved even greater critical and commercial success with singles like “What I Wouldn’t Do (For the Love of You)” and “I Try,” which she performed on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” along with the title track.

Clive Davis, the founder of Arista Records, signed her to his label in 1981.

By the mid-1980s, Angela Bofill was living with her husband, country music performer Rick Vincent, in California’s Napa Valley and raising their baby daughter. The couple divorced in 1994. (Complete information about survivors was not immediately available.)

In a 1985 interview with Ben Fong-Torres for The San Francisco Chronicle, Bofill said that motherhood had grounded her emotionally—“I’m more assertive; I know what I want more”—and also enhanced her musical abilities. “I gained three notes on my upper register,” she said. “If I’d had a boy, I’d have become a bass, who knows.”

She released her final studio album, “Love in Slow Motion,” in 1996. Her music career ended after she suffered strokes in 2006 and 2007, which left her partially paralyzed and with impaired speech.

Despite her challenges, Bofill rarely expressed regret and often spoke lightheartedly about her misfortunes. In a 2011 interview with The Washington Post, she shared how she had grown tired of the demands of touring before her first stroke.

“I asked God, ‘Give me a break,’” she recalled in disjointed syntax. “Tell the truth, I need a break. I’m going, going. No break long time. Over 26 years, no break. I prayed one day, ‘God, I need a break.’ Bam! That’s when stroke hit.”

Last year, Bofill was inducted into “The Women Songwriter’s Hall Of Fame.”

She is survived by her husband Chris and daughter Shauna.

1954-2024