1978 · Behind the Songs
“The gospel ballad from her solo debut that London would not let go.”
After sixteen years fronting Labelle, Patti LaBelle nearly walked away from music altogether. The group split in March 1977 amid growing tension, and she and her husband Armstead Edwards worked through their troubles before she plotted a solo career with producer David Rubinson — the man behind Labelle’s final album Chameleon and records by the Pointer Sisters. The debut, Patti LaBelle, was cut in San Francisco at The Automatt and in Los Angeles at The Village Recorder, and released on Epic in 1977.
The album’s gospel-inspired ballad, “You Are My Friend,” was written by LaBelle with Edwards and her musical director James “Budd” Ellison, and dedicated to the couple’s son Zuri. Released as the second single in January 1978, it only reached the high sixties on the Billboard R&B chart — but charts were never the point. It became one of her famous show-stoppers, the song audiences waited for.
The legend of the song starts in London. LaBelle performed “You Are My Friend” at her first solo concert there and received a standing ovation — a reception that, by her own account of those years, helped give her the resolve to keep going as a solo artist. A ballad written for a child had steadied a career.
Listen for the company she kept on the record: Ray Parker Jr. on guitars, James Gadson on drums, the Waters Family among the backing vocalists. But the center is LaBelle herself, singing like someone who has decided to stay. Nearly fifty years on, it remains the quiet heart of her debut.