LaBelle, soul sisters are making music again
NEW YORK — Before there was Labelle — the ’70s glam/R&B trio of Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash, who have just reunited with “Back to Now,” their first album in 32 years — there was Patti & the Bluebelles.
From their feathered headdresses atop glittery spacesuits, the group Labelle — best known for “Lady Marmalade,” the 1974 hit that gave a risque French lesson to a generation of pop fans — has always been outrageously over-the-top.
By contrast Patti & the Bluebelles were a demure, traditional ’60s girl group, albeit one with an octave-leaping singer who would go on to become Philadelphia’s most recognizable R&B star.
“We wore matching dresses and tiaras” in the Bluebelles, recalled LaBelle. “We were real prom queens.”
A few days before taking flight (and liberties) with “The Star-Spangled Banner” at game four of the World Series, La- Belle and her soul sisters, Hendryx and Dash, were in a green room at Sirius Satellite Radio in Manhattan.
They were there to talk up “Back to Now,” their solid and soulful if not so outlandish comeback album. It features production by Sound of Philadelphia auteurs Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, as well as contemporary genre-hopping artists Wyclef Jean and Lenny Kravitz, whose arrangements on Hendryx’s “Candlelight,” “Superlover” and “System” are standouts.
In the ’60s, Patti & the Bluebelles — Patricia Holt, and Hendryx and Dash, plus Cindy Birdsong, before she left in 1967 to join the Supremes — had their share of struggles and success.
By the late ’60s, Patti and the Bluebelles “weren’t growing,” Hendryx recalled.
Vicki Wickham, the Bluebelles’ British manager, decided a change was in order: “More of a band,” Hendryx recalls. “Less of a girl group.”
“And I said, ’Hell, no!’” recalled LaBelle. “I resisted. Because I said if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We were stagnant. But it wasn’t broke. And I was afraid of losing our fan base.”
LaBelle relented, however, and in 1970 the trio moved to London and began the metamorphosis into Labelle.
In the 1970s, Labelle recorded a superb album, “Gonna Take a Miracle,” as backup vocalists for Laura Nyro, and hit their peak with 1974’s “Nightbirds,” with New Orleans piano man Allen Toussaint and funk-masters The Meters.
“Lady Marmalade,” the tale of a French Quarter prostitute — with the en Francais line, “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?”— was a monster hit that’s been covered many times, most prominently by Christina Aguilera, Mya, Pink and Lil’ Kim, for the 2001 film “Moulin Rouge.”
Just a few years after their biggest success, however, the women of Labelle split. “I wanted to be a Diana Ross,” LaBelle said, joking. “No, we all wanted to go our separate ways. Nona did, and Sarah did, and so did I.”
The group had one-off reunions in 1991 and 2001, and in 2006 they recorded “Dear Rosa,” Hendryx’s tribute to Rosa Parks. LaBelle’s manager, Damascene Pierre Paul, urged her to regroup the groundbreaking trio.
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