Robert “Bobby” Sharp (born November 26, 1924 in Topeka , Kansas ; † January 28, 2013 in Alameda , California ) was an American musician (piano, vocals) and songwriter who wrote the song Unchain My Heart wrote.Sharp grew up in Lawrence, Kansas , before moving to Los Angeles , where he lived with his grandparents during the Great Depression , while his parents Louis and Eva Sharp pursued a career as a concert tenor and athlete in New York . In 1936, at the age of twelve, he lived again with his parents in New York City . Her apartment on Edgecombe Avenue on Harlem’s Sugar Hill was a meeting place for prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance ; these included Walter White, the founder of the civil rights organization NAACP , Roy Wilkins , longtime NAACP chairman andAaron Douglas , an African American artist also from Topeka. Duke Ellington ^[1] lived in the immediate vicinity .

In 1943 Sharp served in the US Army in the 372nd Infantry Regiment , which was stationed in New York and Fort Breckenridge (Kentucky). After his discharge from the army, he studied music at the Greenwich House Music School and then at the Manhattan School of Music harmony , music theory and piano . An important mentor during this phase was the band leader Sy Oliver , a friend of the Sharp family. In the following years Sharp tried to sell his own songs on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley ; a first success was in 1956 Baby Girl of Minewhich he recorded with orchestral accompaniment for the Wing label and which was later covered by Ruth Brown . The song Last Night in the Moonlight he recorded under his own name for the small label Destiny. ^In 1960 he signed a record deal with Epic Records .

In the 1950s and 1960s his songs were recorded by Sarah Vaughan , Sammy Davis, Jr. and especially Ray Charles . He played the first version of Sharp’s best-known song Unchain My Heart in 1961 , which was followed by cover versions by Trini Lopez and Joe Cocker (1987). Bobby Sharp had sold the song’s copyrights for only $ 50 to musician and composer Teddy Powell , who then insisted on his co-authorship. In 1963, Sharp sold its stake to Powell for only $ 1,000. 1987 Sharp renewed the exploitation righton the song just before Joe Cocker successfully covered it.