Patti LaBelle - When You Have Been Blessed [Feels Like Heaven] - Live UNCF - Education Or Future - 2
Patti LaBelle (born Patricia Louise Holte; May 24, 1944)[1] is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and businesswoman with a career spanning 60 years. LaBelle began her career in the early 1960s as lead singer and front woman of the vocal group, Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles. Following the group's name change to Labelle in the early 1970s, they released the iconic disco song "Lady Marmalade" which later was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. As a result, the group later became the first African-American vocal group to land the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and they became the first pop group to play at the Metropolitan Opera House.[1] LaBelle is commonly identified as the "Godmother of Soul"In 1962, the Ordettes included three new members, Cindy Birdsong, Sarah Dash and Nona Hendryx, the latter two girls having sung for another now defunct vocal group.[LaBelle wrote that she was sexually assaulted by Jackie Wilson while at the Brooklyn Fox Theatre in the 1960s. Around 1964, LaBelle was engaged to Otis Williams, founding member of The Temptations. In 1969, LaBelle married a longtime friend, Armstead Edwards. After LaBelle started a solo career, Edwards became her manager until the couple separated in the late 1990s. In 2000, the couple announced they had legally separated, with their divorce being finalized in 2003. They have a son, Zuri Kye Edwards (born 1973), who became her manager.