21 years after his death, two AIDS organisations in San Francisco inherit 140,000 dollars from the biggest star of the disco era: Sylvester
Some things take a little longer. On 16 December 1988, Sylvester James died of the consequences of Aids at the age of 41. The man had made music history. Under his first name Sylvester, James was the world's first openly gay pop star long before George Michael or Elton John. He had earned hundreds of thousands of dollars with hits such as "You make me feel (mighty real)" and "Do you wanna funk" - and spent them again. At the time of his death, the most colourful performer of the disco era was 350,000 dollars in debt.
But Sylvester showed foresight: In his will, he bequeathed all future income from royalties for his recordings to AIDS organisations in his home city of San Francisco. It took 21 years before the Aids Emergency Fund and Project Open Hand were able to share the 140,000 dollars that Sylvester had earned posthumously in recent years. The two organisations are still caring for AIDS patients in the Californian Bay Area today.
"When I started working here seven years ago, I also 'inherited' three untidy boxes of financial files from Sylvester's estate," Mike Smith of the Aids Emergency Fund board told the Bay Area Reporter. "The files detailed that he had a lot of debt - and that there was no plan for him to ever get out of it. I never thought his legacy would pay off like this."
Bob Brenneman, director of Project Open Hand, says that with the $34,000 it has now received, the organisation will be able to provide 13,000 meals to its 1,000 clients.
The unexpected windfall is due to the internet and Sylvester's former record company Fantasy Records. After the singer's debts were settled at the end of the 1990s, the company began to invest the income from his titles for profit until it could be legally clarified who was entitled to them. As Sylvester sells extremely well on paid-for music platforms on the Internet and his music has also been used more and more frequently in films and video games in recent years, further high revenues can be expected. (Paul Schulz)
