Review: LaBelle Brings Les Bops to Dr. Phillips Center

Patti LaBelle may be 77, but her engagement at Dr. Phillips Center on Thursday was as wild a night of live of music as any I've known.

She emerged on stage to worshipful applause, opening with a prophetic "Something Special Is Gonna Happen Tonight," letting loose the still-strong soprano that has made her music's beloved Godmother of Soul.

We didn't know it yet, but a lot of special things were going to happen that night. It was St. Patrick's Day, after all, and St. Patti was in the house.

She wasn't even three songs in when she dropped her first "Where my background singers," or four before she kicked her high heels off, right into the all-too-grateful crowd. (A stagehand appeared to promptly place a fresh pair of shoes on her feet, as one does when stage-handing royalty, obviously.)

By song five, she was throwing shade.

"My friend Celine can sing her face off," Patti said when introducing a late-80s Bond ballad that she originated and Dion later turned into an even bigger hit. "But don't get it twisted. I did it first."

She made that same reminder anytime a famously covered song surfaced in her setlist, at one point pausing to catch a breeze from an on-stage wind machine and saying - almost to herself - "It's hard out here for an O.G."

An OG, indeed. She is voulez-vous coucher's iconic "moi," the phenom who gave us "New Attitude" but is every bit as famous for her own attitude - the diva who in 2019 famously lamented all of Top 40's "little heifers who can't sing" and here tonight in Orlando was calling her own high heels "heifers that got to go." Ladies and gentlemen, that is rock and roll.

No, wait... when she ended "Over the Rainbow" by lifting her mic stand all the way in the air, turning it upside down, and hurling it clear across the stage? That was rock and roll.

But Patti had more for us than rock and rhythm & blues. There was an extended gospel segment at one point - a full-blown, hands-in-the-air, knees-on-the-ground, praise Jesus tour-de-force (with a little bit of praise for Patty sprinkled in too). Accomplished gospel vocalist B. Slade joined Ms. LaBelle on stage for jaw-dropping gymnastics of vocal praise & worship.

There was even a short-lived rap stint. ("Who's got that brand-new flavor in your ear? Lemme hear ya say Patti LaBelle!") It vanished as quickly as the handheld mirror that Patty produced just long enough to give herself a "Hello, gorgeous" before launching into the next song.

It was absolutely everything you'd hope for from a Patti LaBelle concert... and so much more than an artist seven decades into her career could reasonably be expected to give. Her range remains formidable, both stylistically and vocally. I'm still not over the way she tackled the line "warm as a glass of brandy," going way up on the word "warm" in Thursday night's live cover of Chris Stapleton's "Tennessee Whiskey." (That's right- she even threw in some country, because Patti LaBelle does what she wants.)

This is an artist who understands her public persona and knows how to work an audience but ultimately relies on her own powerhouse talent above all else. She's not any ole diva. She's an O.G.iva, and she knows it. And that's what makes LaBelle le best.

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Patti LaBelle's current concert tour includes dates throughout the United States well past summer. Get tickets from her official website. For other upcoming concerts at Dr. Phillips Center, visit the DPC box office online.

What did you think of Patti LaBelle at Dr. Phillips Center's Walt Disney Theater? Let me know on Twitter @AaronWallace.

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