Patti LaBelle: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

Patti LaBelle: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

What Is It?

The YouTube video Patti LaBelle: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert by the YouTube channel NPR Music.

Here is the description for this video:

NPR Music’s Tiny Desk series will celebrate Black History Month with Tiny Desk (home) concerts featuring legends in the world of R&B, jazz, gospel, and hip-hop. Each artist in this legacy lineup has helped to define Black music as we know it and will be performing a Tiny Desk concert for the first time.

Bobby Carter | February 23, 2022
The first song in Patti LaBelle’s Tiny Desk (home) concert sets the tone and quickly sums up the entire 15-minute performance. “Something Special (Is Gonna Happen Tonight)” from her 1986 album Winner In You is a highlight from one of many chapters in her fabulous career. A backstage corner of a concert hall in Austin, Texas, is transformed into Patti’s world, furnished with a throne, flowers and trunks full of shoes. Options are a must, given a knack for kicking off her shoes during shows. The entire band managed to fit onto the set: thirteen people, including fierce background vocals, keys, horns and more, to recreate some of the best from the Godmother of Soul.

LaBelle and company go straight into hits mode after the first number. “Love, Need and Want You” is delivered with the same vibrancy as the 1983 original, with a wink to another hit, “Dilemma,” by Nelly, who sampled it 19 years later. The ballads continue with “If Only You Knew.” She closes with the anthem “Lady Marmalade,” which was also revived in the early 2000s by Christina Aguilera, Mya, Pink and Lil’ Kim.

Ms. Patti had already made Black History with Cindy Birdsong, Sara Dash and Nona Hendryx as the powerhouse group Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles (later Labelle). After the group disbanded, she forged through on her own as a pioneer in music, style and entrepreneurship. Sixty years and counting. Whether big stage or Tiny Desk, the standard-bearing icon continues to exude elegance and grace as a performer.

SET LIST
“Something Special (Is Gonna Happen Tonight)”
“Love, Need and Want You”
“If Only You Knew”
“Lady Marmalade”

MUSICIANS
Patti LaBelle: vocals
Stan Lewis: keys/music director
Danny Nixon: keys
Daryl Robertson: keys
Eric Seats: drums
Alex Evans: bass
Eric Dubose: guitar
Jeff Bradshaw: trombone
Melvin Jones: trumpet
Michael Burton: saxophone
Debra Henry Ramsey: vocals
Brenda Roy: Background vocals
Anthony Williams Jr: vocals
Aja Marie Grant: vocals

CREDITS
Video Director: Whitney Thomas
Audio Engineer: Dwayne Jones
Recording Engineer: Brandon Snell
Management: Zuri Edwards
Production Manager: Joe Falcon
Road Manager: Pamela Hobson
Guitar Tech: Alfonso Perez
Backline Tech: Gabriel Santana Falcon, GearHeadz Inc.
Technical Director: Blake Addyson

TINY DESK TEAM
Producer: Bobby Carter
Video Producer: Joshua Bryant
Audio Mastering: Josh Rogosin
Tiny Production Team: Bob Boilen, Kara Frame, Maia Stern, Ashley Pointer, Sofie Hernandez-Simeonidis
Executive Producer: Keith Jenkins
Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann

A Patch Of Blue

A Patch of Blue (1965)
Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Hartman in A Patch of Blue (1965)

1. What is it?

The 1965 American drama film A Patch Of Blue which was based on the novel Be Ready With Bells And Drums (Goodreads) | Be Ready With Bells And Drums (Open Library) and was directed by the director Guy Green, and starred the actor Sir Sidney Poitier as the character Gordon Ralfe and the actress Mary Elizabeth Hartman as the character Selina D’Arcey.

A Patch of Blue (1965) Official Trailer – Sidney Poitier Movie

2. What’s it about?

A kind blind uneducated abused lower class woman named Selina D’Arcey who lives in an abusive living situation with her mother and grandfather, who one day meets a man named Gordon Ralfe in the park and the two of them form a relationship as Gordon Rafle tries to help her, and the film also covers other topics like racism and race and disabilities and abuse et cetera.

This is how Warner Bros. describes this movie:

Accidentally blinded by her prostitute mother Rose-Ann (Oscar winner Shelley Winters) at the age of five, Selena D’Arcy spends the next 13 years confined in the tiny Los Angeles apartment that they share with “Ole Pa” (Wallace Ford), Selena’s grandfather.

One afternoon at the local park, Selena meets Gordon Ralfe (Sidney Poitier), a thoughtful young office worker whose kind-hearted treatment of her results in her falling in love with him, unaware that he is black.

They continue to meet in the park every afternoon, and he teaches her how to get along in the city.

But when the cruel, domineering Rose-Ann learns of their relationship, she forbids her to have anything more to do with him because of his race.

Selena continues to meet Gordon despite Rose-Ann’s fury, who is determined to end the relationship for good.