Patti LaBelle's real name is Patricia Louise Holte. When her high school singing group, the Ordettes, were signed to a local record label in their native Philadelphia, she was christened with the new surname LaBelle - meaning "the beautiful" in French - by the label's owner, Harold Robinson. Ironically, Robinson didn't think the singer was beautiful at all, saying she was "too dark and too plain" to lead the trio. Nevertheless, the Ordettes soon became Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles and then simply Labelle.
After recording six albums with Labelle - including 1974's
Nightbirds, which boasted their chart-topping single, "
Lady Marmalade" - Patti signed with Epic Records and embarked on a fruitful solo career. Her breakthrough came in 1983 with
I'm In Love Again, featuring the hit singles "Love, Need And Want You" and "If Only You Knew." By this time, she had left Epic for Philadelphia International Records, a label founded by the famed songwriting/production duo Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.
Her solo career got a big boost when she contributed the songs "
New Attitude" and "
Stir It Up" to the
Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack in 1984. The former tune was the R&B singer's first solo hit to reach the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100.
She starred alongside Al Green in a revival of the Broadway musical Your Arms Too Short To Box With God. The pair sparred when LaBelle wanted to skip a matinee performance to visit her cancer-stricken sister, which angered Green, but they eventually buried the hatchet. (All three of LaBelle's sisters died of cancer before they reached 44.)
In 1989, LaBelle performed as
The Acid Queen for The Who's 20th anniversary concert of their 1969 rock opera,
Tommy, in Los Angeles.
She starred in her own short-lived sitcom, Out All Night, which ran from 1992 to 1993. LaBelle, who also sang the title theme, played a singer who runs a nightclub in Los Angeles.
In the early '90s, she had a recurring role on the sitcom A Different World as Adele Wayne, the overbearing mother of the popular character Dwayne Wayne. LaBelle was a big fan of The Cosby Show spinoff and asked her friend Debbie Allen, the show's producer, if she could make an appearance. She ended up guest-starring on eight episodes and occasionally got to sing.
Her other screen credits include roles on the TV series The Nanny, Cosby, American Horror Story: Freak Show, Empire, The Kominsky Method, and The Neighborhood, as well as the movies Preaching To The Choir (2005), Idlewild (2006), Semi-Pro (2008), and Christmas Everlasting (2018).
Her first Grammy win was a tie with another R&B artist. When her 1991 Burnin' album was awarded Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the following year's ceremony, she shared the prize with Lisa Fischer with her hit "How Can I Ease The Pain."
She called off her engagement to Otis Williams of The Temptations after he suggested she give up her singing career and move to Detroit. In 1969, she married Armstead Edwards, a schoolteacher who became her manager when she left Labelle. They divorced in 2003.
LaBelle is a big supporter of the LGBT community and has been hailed as a gay icon. Although she doesn't understand her appeal with that particular fanbase, she's grateful for the love. She said in a 2017 interview with Georgia Voice: "Everybody always says, 'What makes gay men like you?' 'I have no clue,' I say. I still don't. But I know that love has lifted me up for many, many years."
LaBelle hit it off with Mariah Carey when they recorded "
Got To Be Real" together for LaBelle's 1998 live album,
Live! One Night Only. The Godmother of Soul decided she was also godmother of Mariah and took the younger singer under her wing. "One day she just started calling herself my godmother," Mariah confirmed in her memoir
The Meaning Of Mariah Carey. "She truly is one of the realest singers ever."
LaBelle is a tough cookie who isn't afraid to speak her mind, but she delegates the job to her alter-ego, Priscilla. "When things are not done the way that I need to see them, I get a little Priscilla-ish. She comes out and she's not cute," she told Busy Philipps, host of Busy Tonight. "And then I snap out of it, that other Gemini takes over and says, 'Patti don't do that.'"
LaBelle knows her way around the kitchen and has published several cookbooks. In 2015, she teamed with Walmart to sell her sweet potato pie, but it didn't get much attention until a video praising the dessert went viral. According to the company, they were selling a pie per second the weekend after the video debuted.
She initially had trouble getting her solo career off the ground because without a hit record of her own, she couldn't be a headliner and her most of her fellow artists refused to allow her to open for them. Her manager got creative and sent her on the road with comedian Richard Pryor in 1979. LaBelle said it was a wonderful experience and called Pryor a good friend.
In her 1996 autobiography, Don't Block The Blessings, LaBelle shared the two-step routine she uses to protect and preserve her voice. After most performances, she stands in a hot shower for almost an hour, then drinks a special brew of tea, honey, and spirit of peppermint or, when she really needs to open up her throat, warm water and cayenne pepper.
Patti Labelle can't swim despite Otis Redding's efforts to teach her back in the '60s. "I thought I was going to drown Otis because I was pulling him down with me,"
she told The Guardian.
