Jason Scheff

Jason Randolph Scheff (born April 16, 1962) is an American bassist, singer, and songwriter who was a frontman for the American rock band Chicago from 1985 to 2016. Replacing former lead vocalist Peter Cetera, Scheff was the longest-serving bassist/vocalist of Chicago.

In mid-1985, 23-year-old Scheff joined the multiplatinum band Chicago, after Peter Cetera had departed the band to continue his solo career.

His lead vocals were debuted on the 1986 single "25 or 6 to 4", a remake of their 1970 hit, then followed up with "Will You Still Love Me?"

In addition to performing the band's classic material, Scheff had composed several original songs for the band, including their 1989 top-5 single "What Kind of Man Would I Be?" Scheff also co-wrote the song "Heart of Mine" with Bobby Caldwell and Dennis Matkosky. The song became a big hit for Boz Scaggs in 1988 and was included on the 1988 Boz Scaggs album Other Roads and the collection Hits!. Scheff performed "Heart of Mine" several years later in 2007 for a theater-in-the-round setting at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville.

Scheff, along with co-writers Peter Wolf and Ina Wolf, wrote the song "Bigger Than Elvis" in 1993 for what was intended to be Chicago's 22nd album. This song is about his father, Jerry Scheff, describing Jason's childhood memories of watching his father play on television. The album, however, was rejected by Warner Bros. in 1993, and remained unreleased until 2008, when Rhino released it as Chicago XXXII: Stone of Sisyphus.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.