Some white artists, like Elvis, exploit Black culture. So celebrate Bobby Caldwell, who enriched it

‘Caldwell was not leveraging any privilege; he was a genuinely great soul man.’ Bobby Caldwell performing at the Soul Train Awards, Las Vegas, 2013. Photograph: Ethan Miller/BET/Getty Images for BET

A Black person growing up in the west will experience moments of shock. There is the first time you knowingly experience racism, and here, for me, was another: the first time I realised that the man who sang the soul classic What You Won’t Do for Love was white.

Long before there was Ed Sheeran, Adele, Justin Timberlake or, before them, Simply Red, Lisa Stansfield, Jon B (the only white musician Tupac Shakur ever made a record with), or even the current underground king of blue-eyed soul Mayer Hawthorne, there was Bobby Caldwell, who died last week.