1970s R&B star Whitehead shot dead

John Whitehead, a prominent R&B artist best known for the 1979 hit song, Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now, has been shot and killed, police in the US said.

Whitehead, 55, was killed yesterday while working on a vehicle with another man in Philadelphia, police said. The assailant fled.

Whitehead was shot in the neck and collapsed. The other man was shot in the buttocks and taken to a hospital.

Gene McFadden, who was Whitehead’s partner in the singing group McFadden & Whitehead, went to the scene of the shooting in the city’s West Oak Lane neighbourhood and stood there trembling, WPVI-TV reported.

The two men formed a group called the Epsilons in their youth and were discovered by Otis Redding and toured with him in the 1960s, according to their website.

The duo wrote several hit songs performed by others in the 1970s, including Back Stabbers, For the Love of Money, I’ll Always Love My Mamma, Bad Luck, Wake Up Everybody, Where Are All My Friends, The More I Want, and Cold, Cold World.

In the US, Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now went to No. 1 on the R&B chart and reached No. 13 on the pop chart.