Larry Rodgers
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 16, 2005 12:00 AM
Grammy-winning singer Lou Rawls, a Scottsdale resident since 2003, is in a Los Angeles hospital fighting lung cancer.
The 72-year-old singer was diagnosed 12 months ago and was found to also have brain cancer in May, his wife, Nina Rawls, said Thursday during testimony in their marriage-annulment hearing in Maricopa County Superior Court.
The Chicago-born singer is in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and was unable to attend the hearing, his attorney told Judge Michael Wilkinson, who made no ruling on the annulment. advertisement
Rawls, reached by phone Thursday night at his hospital room, confirmed the cancer diagnosis but said, "Don't count me out, brother. There's been many people who have been diagnosed with this kind of thing, and they're still jumpin' and pumpin'."
Rawls, who says he was a regular cigarette smoker for years but quit about 35 years ago, added that he has received both "alternative and traditional treatment."
"He's getting great care; he's in a great mood," Rawls' publicist, Paul Shefrin of Los Angeles, said Thursday as he sat with Rawls in his room.
Lou is trying to annul his marriage of two years and protect hundreds of thousands of dollars of assets that he says Nina "absconded with," according to court papers.
His wife, 35, denies the claim, saying she is trying to protect the couple's assets.
They maintain homes in Scottsdale and Ohio, Nina's home state.
Lou Rawls said he bought a house in the Boulder Ridge area of the far northeast Valley in 2003 because "it's peaceful, it's quiet and it's nice."
Rawls has sold more than 40 million albums and won three Grammys during a career spanning more than four decades.
His hits include Love Is a Hurtin' Thing, Dead End Street and You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine.
He has appeared in 18 movies, including Leaving Las Vegas and Blues Brothers 2000, and acted in 16 television series, including Fantasy Island and Fall Guy.
"Lou Rawls is a magnificent talent and has one of the most recognizable voices in modern American music," said Joel Goldenthal, executive director of Jazz in Az.
Rawls is known for having donated his time and talent to charity for years, including helping the United Negro College Fund raise nearly $200 million in telethons.
"He shared his time with any charitable cause that caught his attention," said Danny Zelisko of Phoenix's Evening Star Productions, which promoted a concert by Rawls and Natalie Cole at Phoenix Symphony Hall in the 1980s.
He hasn't been active in the local music community.
"It's typical," Goldenthal said. "A lot of national artists have a low profile where they live."
Neither Nina Rawls nor her husband's attorney, Robert L. Schwartz, indicated during the hearing how long the singer is expected to survive his bout with one of the most deadly forms of cancer.
"By his doctor's admission, he (Lou) is not expected to live much more," a crying Nina said of her husband Thursday.
Nina remarked that the singer had been given one month to live several months ago, but that deadline had come and passed. Shefrin declined to address the issue.
Lou's medical condition surfaced during the two-hour session concerning his November petition to annul his marriage to his wife, a former flight attendant whom he met in 2002, and to freeze hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets.
Nina, who has worked as her husband's manager since 2003, says she transferred nearly $350,000 in community funds into an account that she solely controls because she feared that one of Lou's two adult daughters, Luanna, is trying to seize the money.
Noting Lou's medical troubles, Wilkinson said Thursday that he plans to reject the singer's request for joint custody of the couple's 11-month-old son, Aiden, and award sole custody to Nina.
Nina said she has been separated from her husband since November and has not been allowed to contact him.
"I just want to see my husband," she said. "I want to know he's OK."
However, Shefrin on Thursday said, "Lou has made a decision that he doesn't want to communicate with Nina right now."
Despite his legendary career and charitable work, Lou's personal life had hit some rocky spots.
He was arrested in 2003 and charged with battery on a household member in Albuquerque after a quarrel with his wife-to-be.
Under questioning by her attorney, Alona M. Gottfried, Nina said she chose to "protect" her husband and family by not seeking prosecution of him.
"For this to happen to Lou at this point in his life, after I spent 3 1/2 years protecting him is very unfair," she said.
However, Schwartz asserted that the singer's wife has done anything but protect him and has committed "fraud" by her conversion of funds and real estate from joint control to her sole accounts.
Schwartz played a profanity-laced phone message left by Nina earlier this year for Luanna:
"I have put up with your (expletive) for so long. . . . By the time I'm done with your dad, you're not going to have (expletive) left," the message says.
Nina told the court she had frequently argued with Luanna, had become frustrated and left the message to retaliate in a way that she thought would hit home.
Lou's oldest daughter, Kendra Smith of Long Beach, Calif., testified Thursday that she felt Luanna was trying to manipulate her father's affairs. Luanna was not in the courtroom.
Orlando Garcia/Getty Images
Lou Rawls, with wife Nina, kisses his baby, Aiden Allen Rawls, in February.
