Track Listing

1. Lady Marmalade
2. What Can I Do for You?
3. Are You Lonely?
4. You Turn Me On
5. Messin' With My Mind - Labelle
6. Take the Night Off
7. Get You Somebody New
8. Isn't It a Shame
9. Joy to Have Your Love
10. I Think About You
11. You Are My Friend
12. Teach Me Tonight (Me Gusta Tu Baile)
13. Quiet Time
14. It's Alright With Me
15. Don't Make Your Angel Cry
16. Come What May

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #133776 in Music
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 1995-02-28
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Hey Sister, Soul Sister, Go Sister
The first five tracks of this album do it for me... then slowly as LaBelle edges its way into the '70s that funky Hammond/Horn/Percussion driven Crescent City N'awleans funk (produced by Allen Tousainte) give way to the poppy '80s (with a brief reprise via "Get You Somebody New". By no means am I putting Patti down, but Labelle was a funk powerhouse... unlike other "girl" group at the time they weren't "cute" and "pretty" they were RAW and SEXY, and Grooves like Lady M. sizzled over the air waves (it was too late for many radio stations to pull it from the airwaves til they realized that the song was about. In addition to Lady M., Are You Lonely and What Can I Do For You (both message heavy tunes) are worth the purchase of the CD alone, especially if you can't hunt down the original albums !

Patti sadly overshadowed by the camp fest of Labelle
This excellent compilation of mid to late 70s material draws upon the best of Labelle and Patti's early solo recordings during their Epic years. It is also possibly the place to start for newer fans interested in checking out Patti's legacy before she became a full fledged supper club soul artiste.

The CD is divided equally between Labelle and Patti, the solo artiste. Trouble is, the first half featuring Labelle's best known numbers from their three Epic albums ("Nightbirds", "Phoenix" and "Chameleon") is so energetic, exciting and uniformly excellent they badly overshadow Patti's solo work. Understandably, half the 8 Labelle tracks here (including their #1 smash hit "Lady Marmalade") are extracted from their chart album "Nightbirds", though the quality of these are more than matched by 2 cuts each from "Phoenix" and "Chameleon". "Messing With My Mind" is as tough as "Get Me Somebody New" is funky. Somebody should lobby CBS to release the never-before-reissued "Phoenix" on CD, seeing that both "Nightbirds" and "Chameleon" have long been available in CD format.

Unfortunately, what goes up must come down. After the excitement and camp fest of Labelle, Patti's soft soul MOR ballads which take up the second half of this CD just seems so tame and boring. Apart from the samba styled "Teach Me Tonight", nothing that Patti cut with Epic remotely rivals the work of Labelle. Without the presence of Sarah and Nona to spice things up and lend Labelle its progressive touch, Patti gives in to her own smaltzy and maudlin tendencies and there's plenty of evidence to suggest that this was at work here.

This "best of" in the Legacy series is nevertheless a terrific compilation. Buy it for the two rare-on-CD Labelle tracks from "Phoenix" if nothing else.

Forget about those other all-female groups...
because Sarah Dash, Nona Hendrix, Cindy Birdsong (who later became a Supreme), and Patti LaBelle puts them all to shame! And this CD highlights the best of their work as well as Patti's early solo work. Although most will know them for Lady Marmalade, that song doesn't even come close to showing the true talent of these ladies. And this CD can read like a soundtrack of someone's like. Isn't It A Shame - a poignant tale of love not always going like expected. You Turn Me On, so soulful and sensuous. Get You Somebody New - puts a man in his place much better than En Vogue's Never Gonna Get It. This CD even features some lesser known earlier work by Patti like the inspiration Quiet Time and the funky Me Gusta Tu Baille. This CD is a REQUIREMENT for anyone who is a fan of Patti and/or LaBelle.