'She was encouraging that we would all use our voices to sing background like we were singing lead. In an interview I conducted with Dash in 2014, I learned that this had been a key part of Wickham's guidance: 'She wanted everyone to be a lead singer,' Dash said. After more than a decade of singing together, the women of Labelle knew each other's voices and understood how to create parts that displayed their individual gifts while remaining tightly connected. Breaking with the girl-group tropes of identical costumes and indistinguishable personalities, each of the women of Labelle would choose a stage costume that conveyed her individuality: There was the fiery earth mother LaBelle, the cool androgyny of Hendryx and Dash's sleek and flirtatious femininity.Ĭrucially, those attitudes and energies carried into their vocal sound as well. Wickham agreed to be their manager, and together the four women devised a new concept, one that tapped into the energy of late '60s counterculture and pushed beyond the romance themes that dominated pop music. Dash, LaBelle and Hendryx realized they needed to change in order to stay relevant, and enlisted the help of Vicki Wickham, a white English music industry professional who had befriended the group when she booked the Bluebelles on the British pop music television program Ready, Steady, Go! in 1966. alongside rhythm and blues luminaries such as Jackie Wilson and James Brown.īy the end of the decade, the demand for girl groups had subsided and Birdsong had left the group to join The Supremes.

The quartet became one of the many girl groups heard on the radio in the early 1960s, charting with ' I Sold My Heart to the Junkman' in 1962 and touring the U.S. Though the group was short-lived, a round of musical chairs between its members and nearby peers The Ordettes led to the formation of Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, with the lineup of Dash, LaBelle, Hendryx and Cindy Birdsong. In high school she formed a doo-wop group, The Del Capris, that would set the course of her career. Sarah Dash was raised in New Jersey and grew up singing in the Trenton Church of Christ, where her father was a pastor. But attentive fans will tell you that the trio's explosive sound owes just as much to Sarah Dash's silver throat - and that to see and hear the members as anything but equals is to miss Labelle's most powerful innovation. In the song's final moments, they each move from the different sections of the stage from which they have been performing and press close together in a tight circle, singing at full throttle, voices intertwined.Įditors' Picks The Voices Of Black Women Were Essential To Phil Spector's Wall Of Soundīecause Patti LaBelle usually sang lead and Nona Hendryx wrote many of the group's songs, their contributions are often foregrounded in discussions of the group's impact. Dash's solo lives up to her introduction: Soaring high, her voice is every bit the sound that New York Times critic Clayton Riley once described as 'sensual human warmth, often fragile but never helpless, a voice that is clear at its center, cream at the edges.' But as the performance continues, the women's sisterhood comes into relief. Patti LaBelle introduces her bandmates, acknowledging Nona Hendryx as the group's main songwriter and Sarah Dash as, affectionately, 'Miss Silver Throat.' And then, the three perform ' (Can I Speak to You Before You Go To) Hollywood' from the 1973 album Pressure Cookin', a song in which each woman takes a turn singing lead. There is a moment in Labelle's 1975 performance on the music variety show Don Kirshner's Rock Concert that tells you all you need to know about the celebrated trio.

Left to right: Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash and Patti LaBelle perform as Labelle in Los Angeles, circa 1975.

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