Don't Block the Blessings

Patti LaBelle has enjoyed phenomenal success for three decades - as a member of the girl group the Blue Belles in the sixties, as the leader of the flamboyant Labelle in the seventies, and as a Grammy-winning solo artist in the eighties and nineties. She has won admiration not only for her music, but also for her tireless charity work and devotion to her fans. Yet until now the public has known only Patti LaBelle the star.
 
Finally, in Don't Block the Blessings, we meet Patti LaBelle the woman, who recounts the ups and downs of her life, including the personal tragedies that haunted her even as she reached every professional goal she set.
Patti's early childhood in southwest Philadelphia was happy, despite her paralyzing shyness. But when her parents' relationship ended violently, Patti's world changed forever. Finding her captivating voice in a Baptist youth choir helped Patti through this heartbreaking time. It also began to transform the painfully quiet high school dropout, who thought of herself as ugly, into the outrageous star with the five-inch pumps and the five-octave range.
 
Music helped sustain her through good times and bad, but Patti also used it as a hiding place in the early years of her marriage and when she helplessly witnessed all three of her sisters die of cancer before the age of forty-four. Only on the eve of a day she never thought she'd live to see did Patti start to really live.