Rochelle Fleming, the singer whose voice helped make First Choice a defining name in Philadelphia soul and disco, has died at 72. Fleming died November 5 in Philadelphia, with her manager George Iz Correia sharing the news for her family. No cause of death was announced.
Her death marks the loss of an artist whose influence did not stay fixed in the decade of First Choice’s original run. The group’s recordings continued to circulate through dance floors, remixes, covers and samples long after First Choice split in 1980. That afterlife brought Fleming’s work to listeners who may have first encountered it through Mary J. Blige, Kaytranada and Kali Uchis rather than through a 1970s Philadelphia record.
That is an unusually durable kind of musical legacy: not merely a catalog remembered by fans, but a body of work that has repeatedly become part of newer music. In Fleming’s case, the path from First Choice to later hip-hop soul and electronic dance music can be traced through two especially clear examples: “Let No Man Put Asunder” and “Love Thang.”
A Philadelphia group with a long reach
Fleming began in Philadelphia’s teen music scene alongside school friends. Before becoming First Choice, the group performed as the Debonettes. Their first release under the First Choice name was “This Is the House (Where Love Died),” issued in 1972.
The next year brought a major chart breakthrough. “Armed and Extremely Dangerous” reached No. 11 on the R&B chart and No. 28 on the pop chart. Producer Norman Harris helped shape the group’s early sound, and he continued to work with First Choice as it moved to Gold Mind, a label connected to Salsoul.
First Choice made six albums before breaking up in 1980. Fleming also continued recording after the group’s split, including the 1985 single “Love Itch.” Yet the group’s recordings were not left behind as a closed chapter. Their songs kept returning in forms that put the original performances into new cultural settings.
BMG, which represents part of First Choice’s catalog through Salsoul, paid tribute to Fleming on November 9 and emphasized the role samples and remixes played in keeping the music active. BMG executive Dan Baxter called Fleming a remarkable singer and said her work with First Choice had left a lasting imprint on dance music.
“Let No Man Put Asunder” became more than a period classic
“Let No Man Put Asunder” came from First Choice’s 1977 album Delusions, which also included “Doctor Love.” The song’s long life demonstrates how a recording can move across audiences without losing its original identity.
First, it gained renewed momentum after First Choice had already disbanded. A 1983 remix helped restore attention to the track, while club DJs continued to draw from it as house music grew. A remix is a revised version of an existing recording, commonly built to change or extend its arrangement, rhythm or structure for a different listening environment. In a club context, a remix can give a song another functional life: something made for radio or an album can become a fixture for DJs and dancers.
The significance here is not that the song was simply replayed. Its remix history helped establish it as material that could travel beyond its original release moment. The record stayed useful to DJs while dance music was changing, helping connect First Choice’s work to an expanding club culture.
Mary J. Blige created another entry point for the song when she closed her 1999 album Mary with a cover of “Let No Man Put Asunder.” A cover version is a new performance of a previously released song. Unlike a sample, which incorporates part of an existing recording into a new one, a cover foregrounds another artist’s interpretation of the song itself.
Blige’s version matters as a bridge for listeners approaching First Choice through hip-hop soul. By placing the song at the end of Mary, she linked a 1977 First Choice recording to a major late-1990s R&B release. For newer listeners, following that line backward leads directly to Fleming and the group’s Delusions album.
It is a useful reminder that influence is often not a straight line. A singer can shape listeners who never knew her name at first, because a later artist carries a song into another era. In this case, the route is especially visible: First Choice recorded “Let No Man Put Asunder,” a remix revived it for club audiences, and Blige later interpreted it for an audience rooted in a different R&B moment.
Kaytranada’s “10%” put “Love Thang” in a new generation’s rotation
The group’s legacy also reached contemporary dance music through “Love Thang.” Kaytranada sampled First Choice’s track on “10%,” his 2019 collaboration with Kali Uchis from the album Bubba. “10%” later won Best Dance Recording at the 2021 Grammy Awards.
Sampling means using part of an existing recording within a new recording. It can involve a musical phrase, a vocal element, a rhythmic section or another identifiable portion of the original. Its creative impact comes from the relationship between the old and the new: a sample can preserve the texture of a prior record while placing it in a fresh arrangement and alongside a new performer.
For First Choice, the “10%” connection shows that Fleming’s work did not survive solely through nostalgia or archival appreciation. A track from the group’s catalog became a building block in a Grammy-winning dance record released decades later. Kaytranada and Kali Uchis introduced that musical lineage to listeners who may be most familiar with contemporary electronic production, alternative R&B and pop.
This is also why catalog ownership and preservation matter beyond business concerns. BMG’s representation of part of First Choice’s work through Salsoul reflects the practical infrastructure behind a legacy that keeps moving. When songs are remixed, covered or sampled, the original recordings and compositions remain central points of reference. They give newer artists material to reinterpret, and they give audiences a route back to the musicians whose work made those reinterpretations possible.
Why Fleming’s voice still matters
Fleming’s career contains a compact but revealing history of how dance music endures. First Choice began as a local Philadelphia teenage vocal group, released a record in 1972, reached the R&B and pop charts the following year, and made six albums before splitting in 1980. On paper, that could look like a story contained by a particular era. The later history of “Let No Man Put Asunder” and “Love Thang” says otherwise.
The group’s music kept finding new functions. It worked as a source for club DJs, as material for a high-profile R&B cover, and as sample material on an award-winning 2019 dance track. Those are distinct forms of circulation, each bringing a song to a different community of listeners.
For audiences discovering Fleming’s work now, the most direct places to start are the recordings named by that continuing legacy: “Armed and Extremely Dangerous,” “Let No Man Put Asunder,” “Doctor Love,” “Love Thang,” and Fleming’s solo single “Love Itch.” They offer a focused look at an artist whose recordings have continued to reverberate across genres and generations.
Fleming’s death is a loss for Philadelphia music, disco and dance music broadly. But the ongoing presence of First Choice in records by later artists makes the scale of her contribution easier to hear. Her voice and her group’s catalog have remained part of the conversation because later musicians and DJs kept finding possibility in them.
That continued exchange between generations is also a thread running through modern music culture, including stories of artists and recordings finding new audiences through later media appearances, interviews and reinterpretations. A recent example of a long-unheard interview returning to public view illustrates the broader point: cultural work often has more than one moment of discovery.
For Rochelle Fleming, First Choice’s enduring place in dance music is not an abstract claim. It can be heard in a 1983 remix, in Mary J. Blige’s 1999 cover, and in the sample that helped power Kaytranada and Kali Uchis’ Grammy-winning “10%.” Those connections preserve the reach of a singer whose work continued to speak well beyond First Choice’s original years.
