Loleatta Hollaway, the disco star best known for her 1980 song, Love Sensation, has died from heart failure at the age of 64.
The music world is mourning the death of the original disco diva whose powerful voice became representative of the musical eara in the mid to late seventies.
Tributes poured in on Twitter after her manager Ron Richardson confirmed her death last night.
DJ Gilles Peterson tweeted “RIP Loleatta Holloway….a total soul and disco legend”.
Chicago-born Hollaway, who was also known for her searing vocals on hits by Blackbox and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, started out singing in her mother’s choir, the Holloway Community Singers, before recording her first single in 1971.
At the end of the decade she sang backing vocals on Dan Hartman’s Re-Light My Fire, who then wrote and produced what became her greatest hit, Love Sensation.
The song was reinvented a decade later when Blackbox sampled her vocal on Right On Time.
Hollaway was also the voice of the Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch hit Good Vibrations in 1991.
More recently, Loleatta recorded a cover of Madonna’s Like A Prayer for the Madonna tribute album Virgin Voices. She was also sampled on the Whitey Houston 2009 recording of Million Dollar Bill.
