by Jeff Meier (FB: Jeff.Meier.90)
Here at Good Black News, we’ve decided to have some fun and make up a new holiday.
With Patti LaBelle (born May 24th) and her good friend and Gemini sister Gladys Knight (born May 28th) both turning 80 over this long weekend, we’re thinking the perfect date is May 26th.
In much the same way that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln’s birthdays were lumped together to create President’s Day in February, we’re launching… Legendary Divas Day!
Certainly, Divas need their own day.
May 26th splits the difference between Patti’s and Gladys’ birthdates and gives us a perfect reason to share a great diva playlist every Memorial Day weekend (future Legendary Diva Days can be celebrated the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend).
LaBelle and Knight are two iconic singers who hold a special place in our collective hearts – they have provided the soundtracks to the lives of multiple generations of fans, with bodies of work to prove it.
But for our world today, they are more than just singers – they are an entire community’s beloved aunties and grandmas. They keep it fun and current by going on shows like “Dancing with the Stars” and “The Masked Singer” (Gladys was robbed on that first season, I tell you), and with cookbooks and Wal-Mart pies. They take care of us just through their being.
To honor their birthdays this weekend, GBN has put together a playlist comprising not 80 songs, but 180 songs that bounce back and forth between Gladys and Patti!
We journey through their 60+ year recording careers with the hits, the duets, the deep cuts, the standards and the spirit.
To be completely transparent, we took the bones of this playlist from a prior one we shared around the time of Gladys’ and Patti’s Verzuz song battle program during the pandemic – and we’ve dramatically expanded it to its new form.