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CRITICAL NOIR
Labelle's Back to Now:
Soundtrack for an Historic Presidential Ticket
by Mark Anthony Neal
LaBelle, the groundbreaking 1970s trio comprised of Sarah Dash, Nona Hendryx, and Patti Labelle, literally had to be imagined. In earlier iterations as the Bluebelles and Patty Labelle & the Bluebells, the group had a solid following on the chitlin' circuit in the late 1960s. In an era that was dominated by Motown girls groups such as Martha and the Vandellas and of course The Supremes, there was little chance that the Bluebelles would ever emerge from under the long shadows cast by the Motown machine. In steps Vicki Wickham, erstwhile television producer-turned-music promoter and manager, who had initially come in contact with Dash, Hendryx and Labelle when the trio toured the UK. Wickham agreed to serve as the group's new manager after they were dropped by their label, with the caveat that the group shorten their name to simply LaBelle.
As Patti Labelle recalls in her autobiography Don't Block the Blessings, Wickham imagined a future for the group that was "bold, brash, brazen. It was going to be revolutionary" adding that the group's music was going to be "political, progressive, passionate...three black women singing about racism, sexism, and eroticism." What Wickham imagined was a future that was well before its time; the pop music world and the arguably the even more insular universe of Soul and R&B were not yet quite prepared for black women speaking directly to worldly and even more personal concerns, such as the pursuit of sexual pleasure--this in the years before the emergence black women writers such as Ntozake Shange, Gayl Jones, Alice Walker, and Michele Wallace as major figures. To their credit, and quite unlike the example set by kindred spirit Betty Davis, Dash, Hendryx and most famously Labelle continued to chart their own musical courses, even when they couldn't hold the group together in the aftermath of their greatest success, the million-seller "Lady Marmalade." Back to Now (Verve) represents the group's first studio recording since 1976.
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CRITICAL NOIR
Labelle's Back to Now:
Soundtrack for an Historic Presidential Ticket
by Mark Anthony Neal
LaBelle, the groundbreaking 1970s trio comprised of Sarah Dash, Nona Hendryx, and Patti Labelle, literally had to be imagined. In earlier iterations as the Bluebelles and Patty Labelle & the Bluebells, the group had a solid following on the chitlin' circuit in the late 1960s. In an era that was dominated by Motown girls groups such as Martha and the Vandellas and of course The Supremes, there was little chance that the Bluebelles would ever emerge from under the long shadows cast by the Motown machine. In steps Vicki Wickham, erstwhile television producer-turned-music promoter and manager, who had initially come in contact with Dash, Hendryx and Labelle when the trio toured the UK. Wickham agreed to serve as the group's new manager after they were dropped by their label, with the caveat that the group shorten their name to simply LaBelle.
As Patti Labelle recalls in her autobiography Don't Block the Blessings, Wickham imagined a future for the group that was "bold, brash, brazen. It was going to be revolutionary" adding that the group's music was going to be "political, progressive, passionate...three black women singing about racism, sexism, and eroticism." What Wickham imagined was a future that was well before its time; the pop music world and the arguably the even more insular universe of Soul and R&B were not yet quite prepared for black women speaking directly to worldly and even more personal concerns, such as the pursuit of sexual pleasure--this in the years before the emergence black women writers such as Ntozake Shange, Gayl Jones, Alice Walker, and Michele Wallace as major figures. To their credit, and quite unlike the example set by kindred spirit Betty Davis, Dash, Hendryx and most famously Labelle continued to chart their own musical courses, even when they couldn't hold the group together in the aftermath of their greatest success, the million-seller "Lady Marmalade." Back to Now (Verve) represents the group's first studio recording since 1976.
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