I’ll be spending a lot of time in this blog writing about story tellers and trying to be an effective storyteller myself. As I’ve written elsewhere, our gifts in being able to craft and tell our stories is the history of our civilization.
Business leaders who evolve into magnificent story tellers have an unfair advantage. Their story telling gives them the ability to achieve resonance as leaders. We should all practice and study story crafting to become better story tellers.
Sometimes we learn from story tellers who surprise us. Many of us don’t think of singers as storytellers along it certainly can be argued that great songs tell powerful stories. Years ago, I heard the great singer Lou Rawls introduce once of his songs with the most riotously funny and smooth intro I’ve ever heard a singer accomplish.
The visual imagery of Rawls’ intro and the story he tells surely is an urban legend by now. If you’ve never heard Lou Rawls sing, you’re in for a treat. He was known as having one of the smoothest, silkiest voices, singing urbane music from the 1970s until his untimely death in 2006. Frank Sinatra said of Rawls he had “the classiest singing and silkiest chops in the singing game.”
The intro takes about ten minutes to listen to. Listen to all the cool elements including the outstanding use of slang crafted in this intro. And then, how he effortlessly glides into his song. It’s very cool. That’s why he was called “the great Lou Rawls.”