Killing Me Softly Part 2

Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia

Slate Podcasts

Music, Music History, Music Commentary

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2022

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The early ’70s was a great time for R&B queens on the charts: Roberta Flack. Dionne Warwick. Patti LaBelle. Chaka Khan. They had come through the ’60s—Dionne as a smooth pop-and-B star, Patti as a girl-group frontwoman, Roberta as a cabaret pianist—and found themselves in a new decade with limitless possibilities. Flack turned folk songs into chart-topping, Grammy-winning R&B. Warwick shifted from Brill Building pop to Philly soul. LaBelle threw her insane voice at rock, funk and glam. And a relative newcomer, Rufus frontwoman Chaka Khan, followed in their footsteps, commanding the band and converting to disco, then electro. By the ’80s, all four women were ready for a major chart victory lap. Join host Chris Molanphy as he traces four parallel careers that expanded the definition of soul from the ’60s through the ’80s and beyond. These soul sisters, flow sisters, bold sisters…killed us softly, walked on by and were, finally, every woman. Podcast production by Kevin Bendis. Host Chris Molanphy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:55.9	OxfordBrooks.ac.uk to find out more.
1:09.9	Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Sleep magazine
1:15.9	about the hits from Coast to Coast. I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop
1:21.4	critic and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song No. 1 series. On our last episode,
1:27.3	we talked about the distinctive but parallel careers of R&B vocal legends
1:33.3	Patie Lebel, Dion Warwick and Roberta Flack. How they continually made songs
1:39.5	theirs and redefined the boundaries for black female artists. Their boundary
1:45.8	pushing helps soften the ground for a fourth R&B queen, Shaka Khan, to emerge as
1:52.7	the star of the funk rock band Rufus and a chart topper in her own right. We're
1:59.1	now up to the late 70s when the moves these ladies made would set up their
2:04.9	careers for some big 80s breakthroughs.
2:15.8	Here was the thing about disco, a music at which black, gay and especially female
2:28.8	artists excelled. It absolutely made the careers of legends like Gloria Gainer and
	...

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