Ok, let’s start talking about Chaka Khan.  This won’t be the last time she gets mentioned, that’s for sure. I’m pretty sure Mary is ok with my secret love affair with Chaka Khan from the 70′s and early 80′s.  It’s just like my experience with funk, r&b and soul in general: there is just a connection there.  Something deep.

I think my first experience with Chaka Khan was “Through the Fire,” from I Feel for You in 1984.  Even then, I thought she was totally unique.  That controlled screech, the vocal range, the sensuality, the musicality was all there, and connected instantly with me.  It was one of those songs I instantly turned up when it came on the radio.

As I began to play funk, and understand that the roots were planted in the late 60′s and early 70′s, I was kind of shocked (and delighted) to find out that Chaka was a huge part of the funk movement.  I honestly had a whole world of music to discover.  It has been a ton of fun to find Chaka around every corner of the journey.

Part of Chaka’s appeal is the music she performed, bands she played with and producers who all had a hand in making Chaka.  This kind of convergence is something I think about a lot. I mean, you have to have talent, for sure, but there are plenty of people who have talent.  It’s just something that happens every once in a while…the right social climate, the right musical context, the right players (Rufus, in Chaka’s case), and a little magic thrown in.

For example, what if the Beatles had hit 10 years later, or earlier.  Same for Michael Jackson, or Elvis, or any one of the handful of people who changed the landscape of music forever.  Maybe Chaka isn’t in that class, but she was definitely riding the wave of Funk that was truly becoming a new genre and musical expression.  Funk had not existed before, and without performers like Chaka, it might not have lived on.

In my journey backwards in time, I began to see Chaka Khan as the most dominant female voice in the funk world.  There were plenty of disco queens, but very few women who could hold their own with Sly, EWF, James Brown, George Clinton, and all the other strong male voices of the era.  She had something unique.

I hadn’t thought of it until I started writing this, but I don’t know why there weren’t more female funk singers.  The roots of funk are really gospel, soul, jazz and r&b music, and there has always been an association with sexuality, which was a perfect match for the climate of the late 60′s and early 70′s.  I guess most female voices either stuck with gospel and soul (like Aretha) or just waited until disco to make their move.  Maybe there was a toughness, or an intelligence required for funk that other singers didn’t have.  I honestly don’t know.  But when you look back, you won’t find a female funk singer whose legacy has remained to today.

Now Chaka did venture into disco, and the pop sensibilities of the 80′s with hits like “Ain’t Nobody” and “I Feel for You,” but she always maintained that mix of sensuality and toughness born decades earlier.  Yeah, her jazz phase is kind of a mess, and currently, she’s more of a figurehead than a producing artist, but if that’s all you’ve experienced, you are really missing out.  Even if you just go back to “Through the Fire” or her backup vocals on Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” or even the various remakes of “I’m Every Woman,” you still have no idea.

Go all the way back to 1974, when she and the band Rufus put out 3 earth-moving albums within 2 years.  Those 3 albums, contain the seeds of what was to come, and they just might change your life all by themselves.  Incidentally, I just learned that the third of those albums (1975′s Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan) featured Tower of Power horns (If you don’t know who they are, then definitely stay tuned…you won’t have to wait long on this blog to hear about them)  This was just a perfect mix to define the next decade of funk.

Then you throw in songs like “Tell Me Something Good,” written by Stevie Wonder, and you’ve got a bona fide star.  And the start of a movement.  And, even more importantly for me, you have a genre that has given me so much joy.  Deep, deep joy.

Oh, and then, as if there weren’t enough reasons to love Chaka Khan and her legacy, I found this: