R.I.P. Terry Huff, lead singer of Special Delivery

Terry Huff, the talented, emotive lead singer of the D.C. soul group Special Delivery and the creator of “I Destroyed Your Love,” for our money one of the greatest soul ballads of the 70s, has died after a long battle with colon cancer. For an artist who only released one album, The Lonely One, as part of Special Delivery, Huff set a permanent place for himself in soul music history. Sadly, his life after the group split was largely one of disappointment, dependency and illness.

Originally called Act 1, the group Special Delivery was a rotating bunch of Washington D.C.-based singers that had a brief moment in the spotlight in 1976. The group had had a minor hit in the UK, but it was the introduction of lead singer, former DC cop Terry Huff, that brought the act to its zenith. 

Fresh from a heartbreaking divorce that he contents was fueled by jealousy, Huff wrote the brilliant ballad “I Destroyed Your Love.” Lyrically aching, the six minute composition was only topped by Huff’s high, sweet falsetto. The single (split up into parts for both sides of the 45) only made it halfway up the Soul charts, but it was an absolute gem that has had a continued life both as a symbol of Washington DC’s soul music high point, but also as arguably one of the greatest sweet soul cuts of the 70s, with the appeal of some of the top Stylistics and Chi-Lites cuts.  It is still a regular on Urban Adult Contemporary radio more than three decades after its introduction…Read full biography.

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