Cat Glover Dies: Singer, Dancer & Prince’s ‘Lovesexy’ Collaborator Was 60

Cat Glover, the singer and dancer whose winning streak on TV’s Star Search talent competition drew the attention of David Bowie as well as the artist she’d become most closely associated with, Prince, has died. She was 60.

Her death was announced last night on her official Facebook page. “It’s with great sadness that we formally announce the passing of Catherine Vernice Glover- AKA ‘Cat.’ Please allow her children, family and friends privacy at this difficult time.” A cause of death and other details were not disclosed, but the message states that a further statement “will be released in due course.”

Born Catherine Vernice Glover in Chicago on July 23, 1964, Glover began dancing at age 5, reaching her first rush of recognition in 1986 as part of the dance duo Pat & Cat with Patrick Allen on Star Search. The act was the competition’s first to nab a perfect four-star score.

Glover later said she was offered a job by David Bowie as a back-up dancer, but she chose to work with Prince, the collaboration that would bring her greatest fame. During the late 1980s, she was a dancer and backing vocalist on Prince’s Sign o’ the Times and Lovesexy tours, rapping on the The Black Album track “Cindy C.” and the Lovesexy album’s “Alphabet St.” She appeared in various videos associated with those albums as well as in the 1987 Prince concert film Sign o’ the Times.

After parting ways with Prince – addressing various rumors as to the reason, Glover said in a 2018 radio interview that she chose to leave, in part, due to Prince’s focus on the 1989 Batman soundtrack.

In her post-Prince years, Glover continued to choreograph and perform. In a 2016 interview with The Crusader newspaper, Glover reflected on Prince’s then-recent death, saying she had last spoken to him less than two years prior when he called her, out of the blue, while she was in a hospital recovering from a serious health issue. “He said a lot of people reached out to him,” Glover said. “He had my back. He was there all the time….”

Information on survivors was not immediately available.