FEATURE:
A Buyer’s Guide
Part Forty-Four: Chaka Khan
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AHEAD of her sixty-eighth birthday…
IN THIS PHOTO: Chaka Khan performs at ChicagoFest in 1981 (the year before she quit Rufus to devote herself full-time to her solo career)/PHOTO CREDIT: Chicago Sun-Times
on 23rd March, I wanted to feature the inimitable and legendary Chaka Khan in A Buyer’s Guide. I think she is one of the greatest Funk and Soul artists who has ever lived. Her twelfth studio album, Hello Happiness, was released in 2019; Khan is showing no signs of slowing down! She is also in the running for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year. Before running down the essential works of Chaka Khan, here is some Wikipedia background to a musical icon:
“Yvette Marie Stevens (born March 23, 1953), better known by her stage name Chaka Khan, is an American musician, singer and songwriter. Her career has spanned nearly five decades, beginning in the 1970s as the lead vocalist of the funk band Rufus. Known as the "Queen of Funk", Khan was the first R&B artist to have a crossover hit featuring a rapper, with "I Feel for You" in 1984.[2] Khan has won ten Grammy Awards and has sold an estimated 70 million records worldwide.
With Rufus, she achieved four gold singles, four gold albums, and two platinum albums. In the course of her solo career, Khan achieved three gold singles, three gold albums, and one platinum album with I Feel for You. She has collaborated with Ry Cooder, Robert Palmer, Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, Guru, Chicago, De la Soul, Mary J. Blige, among others. In December 2016, Billboard magazine ranked her as the 65th most successful dance artist of all time. She was ranked at No. 17 in VH1's original list of the 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll. She has been nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times as a solo artist and four times as a member of Rufus featuring Chaka Khan; the first time in 2012 as a member of Rufus”.
If you need a guide to Chaka Khan’s music and which albums are worth buying, then I hope that this feature can help out. Take a look below and revel in the brilliance of a titanic artist who we hope will be making music…
FOR a long time yet.
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The Four Essential Albums
What Cha' Gonna Do for Me
Release Date: 15th April, 1981
Label: Warner Bros.
Producer: Arif Mardin
Standout Tracks: We Can Work It Out/Any Old Sunday/And the Melody Still Lingers On (Night in Tunisia)
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=111878&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6elTNQdWmobPp0QGEPwPMc?si=iR0NVCUWR6WENc79lmNEPw
Review:
“As a vocalist, Chaka Khan is the one of the very few who often doesn't need great material to prosper. Thankfully, on What Cha' Gonna Do for Me that isn't the case. Teaming again with Arif Mardin, slowly but surely the two began to craft an even more successful and innovative sound. This effort not only bests the work before it, but it is Mardin's most fulfilling production since 1974's Average White Band. The cover of "We Can Work It Out" gets a brash and funky Stevie Wonder-style arrangement, with Gregory Phillanganes doing great synth work. The biggest hit here is the melodic title track and has Khan's patented mix of sexiness and intelligent phrasing. The best song here, "I Know You, I Live You," displays the brilliant bass and drum team of Anthony Jackson and Steve Ferrone, whose innovation all but rendered Rufus obsolete. Their pounding yet refined sound is also on "We've Got Each Other," a hooky and propulsive duet with Khan's brother Mark Stevens. The ambitious and much loved "And the Melody Still Lingers On (Night in Tunisia)" had Mardin and Khan creating pithy lyrics that paid homage to '40s jazz legends as well as all other subsequent musical geniuses. The track features a clavitar solo from Herbie Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie, and an "excerpted" solo break from Charlie Parker. Throughout What Cha' Gonna Do for Me, Mardin seems to get amazing vocals from Khan and has he certainly had fun playing with her voice. What Cha' Gonna Do for Me is arguably the best effort of their partnership” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: What Cha' Gonna Do for Me
Chaka Khan
Release Date: 17th November, 1982
Label: Warner Bros.
Producer: Arif Mardin
Standout Tracks: Tearin' It Up/Slow Dancin' (ft. Rick James)/Twisted
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/1081764
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/7ndE9iVFDmgIRey7SyZv3G?si=0dVu625NRnOJjpu9aa5eBw
Review:
“An excellent album from Chaka Khan, mixing tingling uptempo tunes with her characteristic soaring, glorious vocals. "Got to Be There" reached number five on the R&B charts, but it actually wasn't the album's high point. That was the marvelous "Be Bop Medley," which later led hardcore jazz purist Betty Carter to proclaim Khan the one female singer working outside the jazz arena with legitimate improvising credentials” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Got to Be There
I Feel for You
Release Date: 1st October, 1984
Label: Warner Bros.
Producers: Arif Mardin/Robbie Buchanan/John Robie/Russ Titelman/David ‘Hawk’ Wolinski/James Newton Howard/David Foster/Humberto Gatica/Joe Mardin
Standout Tracks: This Is My Night/My Love Is Alive/Through the Fire
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=42018&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/08yanJqA75TPyDowCXvvPU?si=qs2sZWoJT1uG66zPBng89Q
Review:
“Lost (albeit understandably) amid the title track’s meteoric impact were nine other fantastic songs. “This Is My Night,” the album’s opening shot, is a compelling tune, filled with the excitement of promises to be fulfilled by the subsequent songs. Any album as dominated by dance tracks as I Feel For You is usually brought to an unqualified dead end by its obligatory ballads, but both “Stronger Than Before” (one of the only latter day Bacharach-Bayer Sager ditties that doesn’t sound like warmed over Christopher Cross) and “Through The Fire” (recently sampled and Chipmunkesized a la Cam’ron’s “Oh Boy” on Kayne West’s “Through the Wire”) are legitimate high points in Chaka’s solo career. The album’s most confounding track, “Chinatown,” falls into that odd territory between sincerity and parody. The lyrics, a pre-Lost in Translation attempt to turn Eastern mysticism into the language of romantic inconclusiveness, document just about every corny cultural stereotype imaginable (as when she calls her indifferent lover “some crazy Fu Manchu”—and I sincerely hope that I’m wrong in my interpretation of “eyes that I can’t see, they stare me down”). But Chaka, former Black Panther, belts it like the final verse of “Home.”
Finally, the stuttering, acid-tongued “Caught In The Act,” what with its venomous jilted-lover lyrics and incongruous Speak & Spell synth riff, reconciles Chaka’s drive for pop-crossover success and slavish genuflection to Mother Jazz (her follow up album Destiny would include another tasty electro-jazz funk riff with “Tight Fit,” as well as the unabashedly Down Beat-baiting “Coltrane Dreams”). Al Jarreau’s High Crime LP (also released in 84) covers this same territory, most notably in the now standard “Sticky Wicket.” But where Jarreau’s buttery voice tends to expose the jazz-pop hybrid’s inherent blandness by only adding another layer of aural lubrication, Chaka’s angry rasp holds the listener down by the nape of their neck like fly paper. Which she does in every track on the album and which is why, rockists be damned, I Feel For You is a true pop touchstone” – SLANT
Choice Cut: I Feel for You
CK
Release Date: 22nd November, 1988
Label: Warner Bros.
Producers: Russ Titelman/David Frank/Chaka Khan/Prince/Chris Jasper
Standout Tracks: Soul Talkin’/Eternity/I’ll Be Around
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Chaka-Khan-CK/master/111897
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/7sCnguNPlXb67fQEdgWaIN?si=Sb8qw9ooQmSe4oPGtsGOoQ
Review:
“A first-class release, despite the fact that it didn't pack the normal commercial punch. But it had excellent production, many outstanding selections, and uniformly dazzling, booming, triumphant vocals from Khan. She currently speaks with disdain about the record business, and it's probably due to the relative failure of great records like this to break out and really enjoy the success they merit that's disillusioned her” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)
The Underrated Gem
Chaka
Release Date: 12th October, 1978
Label: Warner Bros.
Producer: Arif Mardin
Standout Tracks: Love Has Fallen on Me/Life Is a Dance/I Was Made to Love Him
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=109436&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/2lvaLIoEg3hwL2dybu6zTC?si=HrDdo6NuTjen5OzPqhAB6A
Review:
“Still very much an integral part of Rufus, Chaka Khan set the charts on fire with her debut solo release. The first single was the R&B chart-topper "I'm Every Woman," an Ashford & Simpson track with Khan lighting up the lyric with her tantalizing vocals. "Life Is a Dance," the second release, doesn't quite compare to its predecessor, but it still made the R&B Top 40. The sentimental ballad "Roll Me Through the Rushes" is poetically engaging, and despite never being released as a single, it became a mainstay of radio. Although Khan had much credibility from her association with Rufus, this album demonstrated that the dynamic vocalist could hold her own ground alone” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: I’m Every Woman
The Latest Album
Hello Happiness
Release Date: 15th February, 2019
Labels: Diary/Island
Producers: Switch/Sarah Ruba
Standout Tracks: Don't Cha Know/Like Sugar/Ladylike
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=1500088&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1QRhPsupQCDlD9EwTWumSA?si=_JQcqw5KRaWhaIu8NOqUHw
Review:
“The album arrives at an interesting juncture in Khan’s career. In 2016, still reeling from the death of her friend Prince, Khan, along with her sister, checked into rehab to treat an addiction to painkillers, stating she “knew it was time to take action to save our lives”. That sense of clarity permeates the album’s title track, where Khan joyously sings “Music makes me say goodbye sadness, hello happiness” over an elastic bass line and chunky synths. She struts around the melody before finally letting go with a sky-rocketing cry of “Wanna dance, wanna dance” that makes the song feel sweaty. That sensation continues into the throbbing, disco-tinged Like a Lady, while the irresistible funk of lead single Like Sugar cleverly creates pockets of space for Khan’s rip-roaring vocal interjections to fade in and out, as if she’s having so much fun dancing she forgot to step up to the mic.
The album sags, however, when the production starts to encroach on the star. Don’t Cha Know is essentially an instrumental, with darting sonic textures, samples of crowd noise and a screeching central riff that drowns everything else out. The otherwise enjoyable Too Hot, in which Khan purrs her way through a lyric about feeding her hunger, is constantly interrupted by a juddering synth that sounds like it crept in from a different, less interesting song. Thankfully, Hello Happiness returns to what it does best.
The closing Ladylike is the album’s quietest moment, with a simple guitar riff and distant percussion carrying a song that effortlessly reminds you of Khan’s influence, on everyone from Whitney Houston to modern R&B practitioners such as Ella Mai. It ends, as it should, with Khan front and centre” – The Guardian
Choice Cut: Hello Happiness
The Chaka Khan Book
Chaka!: Through the Fire
Authors: Chaka Khan/Tonya Bolden
Publication Date: 30th April, 2004
Publisher: Rodale Press
Synopsis:
“Rolling Stone compared it to melted caramel, and Miles Davis compared it to his horn.
Chaka Khan's scorchingly soulful voice first dazzled most of us back in 1974 with Rufus and "Tell Me Something Good," and most recently in her Grammy Award-winning performance in Standing in the Shadows of Motown, singing "What's Going On?" with the Funk Brothers. Over the years, she's had twelve number-one hits and nine number-one albums. Over one hundred appearances on the Billboard charts. Nineteen Grammy nominations and eight Grammy wins. Her achievements in the music industry are legendary, and like her twenty albums, they're well-known to the public.
But the private side of Chaka, the story of what fame and fortune have cost her-- and taught her-- hasn't been told before. In Chaka! Through the Fire, Chaka Khan gives us the whole story of the woman behind the diva and reveals her high and low points. A happy early childhood in a loving, creative home was shattered by escalating fights between her parents. When they finally split, Chaka's father disappeared without even a goodbye, leaving Chaka bewildered, bereft, and blaming her mother. She reconnected with her dad in her teens, finding that he was as liberal and permissive a parent as her mother was strict. Chaka started experimenting with drugs and joined the Black Panthers. Soon after, she fronted for a band called Rufus.
They hit it big with "Tell Me Something Good," and Chaka's stardom was launched. But life on the road was grueling, and as the years went by, the pressures grew. Chaka turned to alcohol and drugs to numb the pain of failed relationships, the guilt of leaving her kids to be raised by Grandma, the resentment she felt about the exhausting demands of her career. It wasn't until things got very bad that she started to see the patterns. All the things she had suffered through in her childhood and swore never to do to her kids-- well, she was doing them.
That's when she began the work of turning it all around. These days, she's still a musical powerhouse, but she's making sure there's time for family, too. She's drug-free. She's started her own record label and has also started a foundation to help women and children in need. Remarkably, Chaka has remained a true wild child despite all the changes: a fiercely independent woman who never compromised her spirit.
Chaka Khan is one of the foremost vocalists of our time and has won recognition in many music genres. She has received countless awards and has worked with some of music's biggest talents, including Miles Davis, Prince, and Dizzy Gillespie. She currently resides in London and Los Angeles.
Tonya Bolden is a magna cum laude baccalaureate of Princeton University. In addition to the many books she has authored, she has also collaborated on Eartha Kitt's Rejuvenate! and contributed text to Diana Ross's Diana Ross: Going Back” – Amazon.co.uk