<Li> The Main Ingredient </Li> <Tr> <Th> Website </Th> <Td> cuba-gooding.com </Td> </Tr> <P> Cuba Gooding Sr. (April 27, 1944--April 20, 2017) was an American singer and actor . He was the most successful lead singer of the soul group The Main Ingredient, replacing former lead singer Donald McPherson who died unexpectedly of leukemia . According to Billboard, as the lead vocalist he scored five top 10 hits most notably, "Everybody Plays the Fool" (1972), peaking at No. 2 for 3 weeks, and peaking at No. 3 on Billboard's all - genre Hot 100 list . "Just Don't Want to Be Lonely" (1974), "Happiness Is Just Around the Bend" and "Rolling Down a Mountainside" were also top 10 hits on Billboard charts . He also recorded as a solo artists with hits of his own . </P> <P> Born in Harlem, New York City, Gooding was a son of Dudley MacDonald Gooding and his wife Addie Alston . The elder Gooding was a native of Barbados who fled the island in 1936 to Cuba, and met and married a woman there . When she was murdered because of their affiliation with Pan Africanist leader Marcus Garvey, Dudley Gooding promised his wife on her deathbed that he would name his first son Cuba . His father died when Cuba was 11 years old . Gooding's father was a taxi driver in Manhattan . Gooding Sr. grew up eight blocks away from the Apollo Theater and nineteen blocks away from Carnegie Hall . </P>

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