R. B. Greaves, an R&B singer whose 1969 hit “Take a Letter, Maria” reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 68.
His death was confirmed by his son, Shiloh Greaves.
“Take a Letter, Maria,” which Mr. Greaves wrote, is about a hard-working man who dictates a “Dear Jane” letter to his secretary after coming home to find his wife “in the arms of another man.”
He sings, more in acceptance than in anger: “So take a letter, Maria, address it to my wife/Say I won’t be coming home, gonna start a new life.”
Despite its theme of betrayal, the song remains upbeat and ends with the husband asking Maria out to dinner.
The song, which was recorded at the hitmaking Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama, went gold, selling more than a million copies.
Mr. Greaves was a nephew of the gospel and soul singer Sam Cooke, who was shot and killed by a Los Angeles motel manager in 1964.
Mr. Greaves’s 1970 version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s "Always Something There to Remind Me' reached No. 27 on the Billboard chart. (A version by the synth-pop group Naked Eyes hit No. 8 on the chart in 1983.) Among his other recordings were covers of James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” and Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale.”
Ronald Bertram Aloysius Greaves was born on Nov. 28, 1943, at an Air Force base in Georgetown in what was then British Guyana. He was raised on a Seminole reservation in California. In 1963 Mr. Greaves moved to England to perform and record as the frontman for Sonny Childe and the TNT’s.
He returned to America to record “Take a Letter, Maria” on Atco Records and “Always Something There to Remind Me,” both of which appeared on his album “R.B. Greaves.”
Mr. Greaves moved to Los Angeles and began to work in the technology industry after a failed attempt to revive his recording career in the late 1970s.
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This article, "R.B. Greaves, Pop Singer, Dies at 68," first appeared in the New York Times.
