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Babyface Brings His Brand of Cool Jams to Fort Benning

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

By Joseph Andrew Lee 

Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) isn’t always popular, but at least it brought 10-time Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds to Fort Benning, Ga., to play a free USO concert for troops and their families.

Friday’s “BRAC to the Future” show was a celebration of the arrival of the Maneuver Center of Excellence, an armor school that moved from Fort Knox, Ky., to Fort Benning.

More than 3,500 military personnel and their families attended the free concert, which was open to anyone with a military ID.

“It’s a different feeling, playing for the troops,” Edmonds said. “You feel like you’re giving something back to [those who] have done so much for us. At this particular point … it means more to me. I appreciate what the service men and women and their families do for all our lives.”

Edmonds has left an indelible mark on the music industry as a songwriter and producer with more than 125 top ten R&B and pop hits, including 42 at number one. Perhaps most notably, Edmonds was one of the producers responsible for the “new jack swing” style embraced by Boyz II Men, Bobby Brown, Paula Abdul and Sheena Easton in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

He started his production company, LaFace Records, with drummer Antonio “L.A.” Reid (current co-host on the new Fox program “The X Factor”) in 1989 and promptly signed TLC and Toni Braxton. Since then, he has worked with such musical luminaries as Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Beyonce, Eric Clapton and the late Michael Jackson.

Edmonds is also no stranger to the military. After graduating high school in the late 1970s, he often played at Ft. Benjamin Harrison near his hometown of Indianapolis. His 2007 song, “A Soldier’s Story,” honored the service and sacrifice of America’s troops and all those who have fallen since 9/11. With three brothers and a father who served, it wasn’t hard for Edmonds to find the emotional tone he was looking for.

“I was at [my friend Joe’s] house, looking at the newspaper and noticing how many soldiers had died over in Iraq at that point,” Edmonds said when recalling the day he wrote “A Soldier’s Story.” “Looking at the ages, I was blown away by how young some of the soldiers were. I started imagining how it must be for every family that goes through that loss.”

Though Edmonds has experienced the loss of his own brother and father, he said he can’t imagine how hard it must be for the parents of our brave troops to lose a son or daughter overseas.

“If you don’t deal with it personally you don’t know what that feeling is like,” Edmonds said. “But they’ve sacrificed their lives for us. For me to even be able to be in this country, to go on tour and have the freedoms that I have. There are so many – not only grown men and women – but kids – who have their whole lives cut short.

“All I can say is ‘Thank you.’ I don’t know if you can say any more than that. It’s my pleasure to be there and the service crowd is always pretty hyped up and it makes it a lot of fun.” 

Edmonds shows no sign of slowing down. At 53, he continues to write and produce new hit tracks and even maintains those “Babyface” looks. To find out where you can catch Edmonds next, check his tour calendar at www.babyfacemusic.com.