David Ritz

For the corporate CEO, see Ritz Camera Centers.

David Ritz in 2008

David Ritz (born c. 1942) is an American author, most of whose books are biographies of soul music and R&B legends such as Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and Janet Jackson. On four occasions, his co-authored autobiographies of musicians (for books with Jerry Wexler, The Neville Brothers, B.B. King and Etta James) have been awarded the Ralph J. Gleason Award. He is also a novelist (Blue Notes Under a Green Felt Hat, The Man Who Brought the Dodgers Back to Brooklyn).

Ritz is probably most notable for his work with Marvin Gaye. The two first met in 1978 shortly after the release of Gaye's tormented Here, My Dear album. Ritz had publicly defended Gaye's album as a body of work after a Los Angeles Times critic had panned the album (it wasn't a commercial success either).^{[citation needed]} Ritz also alleged that he co-wrote Gaye's hit Sexual Healing (while the extent of his contributions was debated and the subject of a lawsuit, he was at least acknowledged by Gaye's associates to have thought up the title).

Ritz began giving out interviews with Gaye as part of an autobiography Gaye was working on. Those interviews became the basis to Ritz's most successful book, Divided Soul: The Life & Times of Marvin Gaye, which Ritz released in 1985, a year after Gaye was killed by his father.

Ritz has also taken part in several other albums by other artists, most notably Janet Jackson on her 2004 album Damita Jo, on the interludes "Looking for Love" and "The One". Ritz also wrote an essay for Jackson on her 1995 greatest hits compilation Design of a Decade 1986/1996. He has also written liner notes and has done essays on Marvin Gaye albums after they were re-released.

Ritz wrote the liner notes on Linda Ronstadt's 2002 compilation The Very Best of Linda Ronstadt.

His latest work is titled Rickles' Book, a memoir that Don Rickles has released with the help of Ritz.

As of 2008, Ritz is working on books with Leiber & Stoller, Scott Weiland, Cornel West, Janet Jackson and David Letterman's longtime band leader Paul Shaffer.

Ritz also co-wrote the best-selling memoir of African-American journalist Tavis Smiley What I Know For Sure: My Story of Growing Up in America. In 2011, "Not Dead & Not For Sale - The Earthling Papers - A Memoir" Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland's autobiography, co-authored by Ritz, was released by Scribner Books.

Bibliography

• Ritz, D.; Presley, P. B.; Presley, L. M. (2005), Elvis by the Presleys, New York City: Crown, pp. 231, ISBN 0307237419, OCLC 60419909 
• Rickles, D.; Ritz, D. (2007), Rickles' Book, New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 239, ISBN 0743293053, OCLC 76828824 
• Shaffer, P.; Ritz, D. (2009), We'll be here for the rest of our lives: A swingin' show-biz saga, New York: Doubleday/Flying Dolphin Press, pp. 322, ISBN 0385524838, OCLC 299714497