LOS ANGELES, (Reuters):
GRAMMY-WINNING SINGER Lou Rawls has been diagnosed with cancer and was being treated at a Los Angeles hospital, his spokesman said on Friday.
"He was diagnosed with cancer a while back and has undergone various treatments," Paul Shefrin said, adding that the illness became public in an Arizona court where the 70-year-old crooner was seeking an annulment of his marriage.
Shefrin declined to provide further details or confirm a report in the Arizona Republic that Rawls was diagnosed with lung cancer a year ago.
"Don't count me out, brother," Rawls told the paper from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. "There's been many people who have been diagnosed with this kind of thing and they're still jumpin' and pumpin'."
Rawls said in the interview that he had smoked regularly as a young man but quit 35 years ago.
