Cuba Gooding Sr. Found Dead in His Car

cuba-gooding-sr-pic-0420-mc_medium
cuba-gooding-sr-pic-0420-mc_medium

Cuba Gooding Senior, lead singer of The Main Ingredient and father of Oscar-winning actor Cuba Gooding Junior, was found dead in his car today, one week shy of his 73rd birthday.

TMZ reports that the “Everybody Plays the Fool” singer was “slumped over” in his parked silver Jaguar in Woodland Hills, California. They quote a second-hand source as saying “the police suspect he died from an overdose.”

Gooding leaves wife Shirley and four children, including Cuba Junior, who won an Oscar for Jerry Maguire. According to Wikipedia, Gooding Senior was developing a movie project, Everybody Plays the Fool: The Cuba Gooding Story, about three generations of the Gooding family.

The New York City native joined The Main Ingredient in 1972 after the group’s original singer died of leukemia. His first single with the group, “Everybody Plays the Fool,” reached Top 3 on both the R&B and pop charts. But that was as good as it got. The group had one more Top 10 hit, “Just Don’t Want to Be Lonely,” in 1974.

Gooding recorded a song called “Everybody’s Got to Vote” last year and posted it on his website, www.cuba-gooding.com.