Patti LaBelle's star, which first rose in the 1960s, shines ever brightly in the 1990s. The 1993 album, Patti LaBelle LIVE! yielded a 1994 Grammy nomination (her eighth) for the single "All Right Now." She's currently featured on the superstar-gathering album Rhythm, Country & Blues, in a heartbreaking rendition of "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby" with Travis Tritt, and she appeared with him and the album's other artists on a PBS special that documented this collaboration between the best artists in country and soul. She'll be spending the summer on the road in the Budweiser SuperFest Tour. And later this fall, she'll embark on another solo concert tour.
The 1994 excitement comes on the heels of a triumphant 1993. Patti won an American Music Award for Favorite R&B Female Artist, which now stands alongside her Grammy Award for her hit album, Burnin'. Her Still Patti concert tour was a smash across the U.S. and Canada and is now available on home video. She joined Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin and a host of other luminaries in a 40th birthday salute to Oprah Winfrey, and brought down the house in a televised Christmas concert performed for President and Mrs. Clinton in Washington.
La Belle's busy year continued with fellow superstars Elton John,
Michael Bolton and Paula Abdul on the Disney Channel's special
televised concert, For the Children, benefiting the Pediatric
AIDS Foundation; duet recordings with Ronnie Milsap and Michael
Crawford; and a reunion with her "Sisters in the Name of Love" co-stars
Gladys Knight and Dionne
Warwick to record "Superwoman" for Knight's
'93 album -- a collaboration that snared Grammy nominations for the
three powerhouse vocalists. Patti also did double duty for NBC,
starring in her own television series, Out All Night
(now seen regularly on BET) and continuing her recurring role on the
hit series A Different World, right up until its last episode.
And she returned to her church roots in the critically acclaimed PBS
special, Going Home to Gospel With Patti LaBelle, a program that
is now an encore highlight of public television fundraising drives
around the country.
But the recent honor LaBelle holds most dear to her heart is her inclusion on the fabled Hollywood Boulevard "Walk of Fame." In March 1993, in front of thousands of fans, actress Whoopi Goldberg and "Mayor of Hollywood" Johnny Grant hosted the ceremony, during which her gold star rightfully took its place alongside the entertainment world's other legendary greats. The event meant all the more to her because her devoted fans raised the money to purchase her star -- a touching indication of the esteem in which the public holds her.
In every year, Patti LaBelle gives as much of herself offstage as on. Among her many charitable activities, Patti serves as the spokeswoman for the National Cancer Institute to help alert women to the importance of early breast cancer detection -- a cause close to her heart, because the disease claimed the lives of her mother and three sisters. This year, she'll receive the Howard University Hospital Legacy of Leadership award for her cancer awareness efforts, and she consistently lends her extraordinary talents to numerous benefits in the fight against AIDS.
Patti's shimmering talent can be consistently counted on, but it's difficult to predict what, with her passion for fashion, she will wear next or what she will do with her flamboyant hair. It's also impossible to predict what she'll say; Patti has always been open, down-to-earth and ever-ready to speak her mind. And no matter what she's doing in her career -- a television special such as the annual Essence Awards; top-drawer movies like A Soldier's Story or the USA Cable dramatization of the Delta Airlines crash, Fire and Rain; or championing her other favorite causes (adoption, foster care, Big Sisters and the United Negro College Fund) -- fans can always depend on Patti LaBelle being unabashedly Patti: caring, good natured, straightforward.
Born May 24, 1944 (Patti has always been frank about her age), Patti was raised in the melting pot of Southwest Philly. Although affected by her parents' separation when she was only 12, Patti lived a happy, wholesome teenage life -- running track, singing in the glee club and acting in plays at John Bartram High School. But her extraordinary musical gift emerged most clearly in the Beulah Baptist Church Choir, where she remained a soloist even after embarking on a professional career.
Patti was still only a teenager when she and Cindy Birdsong (later a member of the Supremes) sang with the Ordettes. When two girls left the group, Nona Hendrix and Sarah Dash signed on and Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells was born. This was in 1961. By the following year, the girls had their first multimillion seller, "I Sold My Heart to the Junkman. " With other hits, including "All Or Nothing" and "You'll Never Walk Alone," the Bluebells accrued a devoted following and a status as one of the foremost girl groups of the era.
Then in the late '60s, when British rock was eclipsing the homegrown girl-group, California and Motown sounds in the U.S., the Bluebells toured England, playing to wildly enthusiastic audiences. But a musical revolution had obviously taken place worldwide. So when British producer Vicki Wickham, impressed by the Bluebells' still-untapped talents, offered to effect a stylistic transformation, the group consented. The result was LaBelle, a trio of massive musical power and political sensibility that was consistently ahead of its time.
The trend-setting singer/songwriter Laura Nyro, long a Bluebells fan, was even more impressed by LaBelle and recorded her landmark album, It's Gonna Take a Miracle, with the group. The recording itself was a miracle, created jam-session style during two intense weeks in a small Philadelphia studio. Shortly thereafter Warner Brothers released the group's first albums, LaBelle and Moon Shadow. Pressure Cookin' soon followed on RCA. But it was Nightbirds, LaBelle's first Epic album, that sent the group soaring into the superstar stratosphere, largely on the strength of "Lady Marmalade" ("Voulez-Vous Couchez Avec Moi Ce Soir?") which became a disco anthem of the '70s.
Extensive tours and two more popular albums, Phoenix and Chameleon , followed -- but the burden of being musical trailblazers eventually became too great. "Rocked and rolled out," as Patti describes it, the group disbanded on good terms in 1976.
During the next several years, Patti was kept busy with new albums (Released and The Spirit's In It), new tours, television specials, and most importantly, a starring role in Vinette Carroll's Your Arms Too Short to Box With God. Her performance tapped deep into the heart of Patti's gospel roots, won her new favor in the critics' eyes, and brought her (along with co-star Al Green) to Broadway for the first time. Since then, she's had three more hugely successful one-woman concert engagements on the Great White Way.
In the early '80s, mega-hit popularity on the musical charts inexplicably eluded her -- despite marvelous single releases like "The Best Is Yet to Come" (with Grover Washington, Jr.), "Love Has Finally Come at Last" (with Bobby Womack) and "If You Only Knew." Superstardom anointed her again, however, with two hits from the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack: "New Attitude" and "Stir It Up."
Those hits were followed by her 1985 debut album for MCA Records, Winner in You, which went platinum thanks to sizzlers like "On My Own" (with Michael McDonald), "Oh, People," "Kiss Away the Pain" and "Something Special." She hushed, then whipped the crowd into a frenzy at Live Aid; left the audience speechless on NBC-TV's Emmy-winning Motown Salutes the Apollo; was one of the first artists (at Coretta King's request) to musically commemorate the inaugural celebration of the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday; rivaled Miss Liberty herself at the closing ceremonies of the Statue of Liberty celebrations; starred in her own NBC TV special (with guests Bill Cosby, Cyndi Lauper and Luther Vandross); criss-crossed the country on several national tours; knocked 'em dead in Europe and Japan; made two more movies, Unnatural Causes (with Alfred Woodard and John Ritter) and Sing (with Lorraine Bracco and Louise Lasser). In the late '80s and early '90s, a triumphant Patti continued to release chart-topping albums, including Be Yourself and This Christmas. As a musical artist, Patti LaBelle remains unrivaled and unstoppable.
Little wonder then that Patti has been honored with numerous awards: Philadelphia's Key to the City, a medal from the Congressional Black Caucus, a citation from Congress on her 20th anniversary in the music business, another citation from President Reagan, a cable ACE, the B'nai B'rith Creative Achievement Award, two NAACP Entertainer of the Year Awards, the NAACP Image Award (for three consecutive years), the Ebony Achievement Award, the Martin Luther King Lifetime Achievement Award, three Emmy nominations, eight Grammy nominations and a 1992 Grammy Award for Best R&B Female Vocal Performance for her album Burnin'. Also, for her work on behalf of cancer awareness, a special research laboratory for cancer was dedicated in her honor at the famed Sylvester Comprehensive Care Center at the University of Miami.
All of this amounts to extraordinary acknowledgment of even more extraordinary efforts and accomplishments. However, LaBelle is the first to remind everyone that her most important role is that of wife and mother (she's Mom to one teenaged boy, two adopted sons in their late 20s and the son and daughter of her late sister Jackie). When Patti's not setting the world on its ear, she's home (still Philadelphia), cooking, shopping, doing laundry -- being a person -- just like everyone else. To really be a star, you have to have your feet planted firmly on the proverbial ground, and Patti LaBelle is rooted. She means it when she tells her fans, "I'm just like you, only I make records." She forgets to add that she's also the hardest-working lady in show business. But in spite of her constant musical work, her rising acting career and her charitable heart ever in the right place, she's just being herself -- a "gem" in the truest sense of the word.