Patti LaBelle

Simone tops the list twice over — named in a 1986 interview and again, a decade later, in LaBelle's memoir, where the same three singers are credited with giving her, during a period of family trauma, "something to believe when I thought I had lost my faith." That's testimony to formative listening, not borrowed technique; LaBelle never modeled her voice on Simone's. What she did do, thirty-one years later at seventy-three, was return to Simone's own songbook — proof the listening never stopped, even if the imitation never started.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1966

Wild Is the WindNina Simone

→↓

2017

Wild Is the WindPatti LaBelle

listen forThe follow-through: LaBelle's 2017 jazz-standards album Bel Hommage revisits Simone's "Wild Is the Wind" more than five decades after she named her a teenage favorite. Simone's original holds back, letting the title phrase gust and settle over a spare arrangement; LaBelle's version pushes the same melody toward gospel testimony, holding notes until they build rather than settle — the Beulah Baptist belt standing in where Simone stayed hushed.

Staton is the second name on the same list, present in both the 1986 interview and the 1996 memoir passage, always paired with Simone and Lynne and never singled out with her own anecdote. What that consistency documents is a bebop-schooled singer known for pushing standards past polite phrasing into hard-swinging, blues-inflected extremes — company a teenage LaBelle kept without, by her own account, trying to sound like her.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1957

The Late, Late ShowDakota Staton

→↓

1966

Over the RainbowPatti LaBelle

listen forNo cover or interpolation ties the two directly, so the clearest audible link is stylistic: Staton's 1957 title-track hit "The Late, Late Show" takes a standard past careful phrasing into dynamic extremes — a held note stretched until it cracks, then released. The Blue Belles' 1966 "Over the Rainbow" works the same way, trampling the song's polite melody with notes sung as though each might be her last. The link is a shared attack, not a documented transmission.

Lynne completes the trio — the third name in both the 1986 interview and the 1996 memoir passage, credited in identical terms to Simone and Staton. She had scored a rare feat in 1964, topping the jazz, R&B and pop charts simultaneously with "I Wish You Love," the same year a teenage LaBelle would have been absorbing exactly that kind of warm, sophisticated balladry at home. As with the other two names, LaBelle's own account draws a hard line: heard often, imitated never.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1964

I Wish You LoveGloria Lynne

→↓

1983

If Only You KnewPatti LaBelle

listen forThe clearest pairing is stylistic rather than documented: Lynne's "I Wish You Love" holds its warmth in reserve through a restrained verse before opening the voice fully on the chorus. LaBelle's 1983 solo hit "If Only You Knew" follows the identical shape — a held-back opening that detonates into full-throated declaration — without any confirmed cover or session tying the two records together.