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Wade handed away final Thursday at his dwelling in Montclair, New Jersey, reportedly from issues of Parkinson’s illness. He was 87.

Adam Wade, the primary Black host of a community tv sport present, who additionally had three Billboard Prime 10 hits, died final week at age 87.

In a press release to The New York Occasions, his spouse of 33 years, Jeree Wade, shared that he died from issues of Parkinson’s illness. Wade handed away on July 7 at his dwelling in Montclair, New Jersey.

Adam Wade, the first Black host of a network television game show, who also had three Billboard Top 10 hits, died last Thursday at age 87. (Photo: Screenshot/YouTube.com)

Adam Wade, the primary Black host of a community tv sport present, who additionally had three Billboard Prime 10 hits, died final Thursday at age 87. (Picture: Screenshot/YouTube.com)

Wade turned the primary Black host on a TV sport present in 1975, the yr CBS tapped him to MC its day by day daytime sport present, “Musical Chairs.” It noticed 4 contestants compete to guess the following line of a track carried out by Wade or one of many visitor vocalists, per TV Tropes. A few of its visitor performers included The Spinners and singer Irene Cara.

Wade acquired piles of racist hate mail consequently. Talking to Connecticut Public Radio in 2014, he recalled a letter from a person “saying he did not need his spouse sitting at dwelling watching the Black man hand out the cash and the smarts.”

“I am certain [the show’s producers] hid among the letters from me so I would not get upset,” Wade stated.

A CBS affiliate in Alabama even refused to hold “Musical Chairs,” which was canceled after lower than 5 months on the air.

Earlier than his foray into tv, Wade had a profitable profession in music as a singer/songwriter. In 1961, he scored three consecutive Billboard Prime 10 hits for his songs “Take Good Care of Her,” which reached No. 7; “The Writing on the Wall,” his No. 5 hits, and “As If I Did not Know,” a jam that made it to No. 10. He appeared in a number of movies, performs and TV productions, together with “Shaft,” “The Guiding Mild,” “Seek for Tomorrow,” “The Jeffersons” and “Sanford & Son.” Wade was additionally among the many performers in a 2008 touring firm of “The Shade Purple.”

Born March 17, 1935 in Pittsburgh and raised by his grandparents, Wade attended Virginia State College on a basketball scholarship. He finally stop the HBCU after three years and started working for Dr. Jonas E. Salk, developer of the polio vaccine, on the College of Pittsburgh. It was throughout this time {that a} pal invited Wade to New York to audition for a music writer. When he was provided a recording contract with Coed Data, Wade was reportedly unsure about accepting the deal, turning to Dr. Salk for recommendation.

“He instructed me he had this chance,” Salk instructed The Occasions in 1961. “I instructed him he should search his personal soul to seek out out what’s in him that wishes to return out.”

Wade made his first document with the label in 1958 and moved to Manhattan two years later, shortly making a reputation for himself within the nightclub scene.

4 a long time after leaving VSU, he acquired his BA diploma from Lehman Faculty, then his grasp’s diploma from Brooklyn Faculty, achievements of which he was notably proud.

Wade’s spouse, Jeree, is a singer, actress and producer, and collectively they ran Songbird, “an organization that produced African American historic revues, together with the musical ‘Shades of Harlem,’ which was staged Off Broadway on the Village Gate in 1983, ” per The New York Occasions.

He’s survived by his spouse and their son; three youngsters he shared together with his first spouse, Kay Wade; and several other grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

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The put up Community TV’s first Black sport present host, Adam Wade, has died showing first on TheGrio.

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