| Lady Marmalade |
23 June 2003
|
Patti Labelle's Love Fest
No one survives in the music business for decades without real talent. Hype and popular fads can make a musician rich in a few years, but they cannot sell tickets forever. Ms. Patti Labelle, who is a star but was never a megastar, proved at Radio City Music Hall last week just why she still sells tickets. Her voice is gut-wrenchingly powerful.
She has always worn make-up thick enough to count as Kabuki-style, her hair clearly inspired Princess Leia and Queen Amadala's do-s in the Star Wars sagas, and her dresses border on the awful. All of this would be an embarrassment save for her voice, which is as strong and clear and pure at 59 as it was at 29. Her voice, which required no assistance from the microphone, makes all the rest of her act a signature.
Members of the audience handed her bouquet after bouquet throughout the night, with security relaxed enough to let it happen. Ms. Labelle is not the most beloved singer in the world, but among her fans, she is certainly the best beloved. Middle-aged gentlemen stood like teen-agers to give her roses, blushing sweating and ecstatic. Mr. Labelle accepted it with good grace and class.
Mr. Barry Govern, whom no one knows apart from his family, got her attention from his wheelchair (not the only disabled man to share a moment with her either), and he thanked her for the strength he drew from her music during his 3-year fight with cancer. A moment of sentimental danger for any performer, Ms. Labelle responded by presenting him with a stuffed bear another fan had given her. To one's left, a middle-aged black woman wept while to one's right two white gay men cheered themselves hoarse. People do understand nobility even if they rarely see it.
Ms. Labelle's opening act deserves mention as well, a young singer performing as Jaheim. Attired like every other young rapper/soul singer, he possesses a voice of an old soul (to use Ms. Labelle's term), reminiscent of Mr. Luther Vandross. One expects him to sell out the same theatre a quarter of a century from now.