Lionel Richie Parking

You know the story, but here are the facts. Among accolades such as selling over 100 million albums and achieving countless honors from an Academy Award® to four Grammy Awards, one of the accomplishments Lionel Richie is actually most proud of is his Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Tuskegee University. “Normally, the titles career musician and college graduate are mutually exclusive, but they’re not for me,” he laughs. “That’s not typically the story with these things! Let’s start with the fact that I was born and raised on the university campus…” Tuskegee, Alabama boasts a rich history, being both the birthplace of Miss Rosa Parks and the home of The Tuskegee Airmen. It wasn’t necessarily Lionel’s goal to expand or add to that legacy for his hometown, but when chance to pursue music presented itself, he jumped at it. While attending Tuskegee University, he bumped into a couple members of The Commodores (known as The Mystics back then) walking across the grounds. At the time, he happened to be carrying a saxophone. “They thought I brought my horn to school because I could play it,” he admits. “I didn’t tell them that I was bringing to school so I could learn how to play it. The joke I tell all the time is, ‘I was the best horn holder who ever lived for the first two years I was in the band!’” He did learn thankfully. He also slowly became confident in the spotlight. Following the group’s signing to Motown, Richie found his footing after learning a rather eye-opening truth. “I discovered something,” he affirms. “I started interviewing top artists of the time like Marvin Gaye, and I realized that most of them couldn’t read music. My grandmother was a classical piano teacher, and she tried to teach me, but I never entirely grasped it. I thought that was a pre-requisite to songwriting though. The key was given to me, and I realized, ‘Holy crap, I can do this too!’” In The Commodores, he developed a groundbreaking style that defied genre categories, penning smashes s