The Transformative Power of a Classic Ballad

The Times critic Wesley Morris had listened to Patti LaBelle’s live rendition of “If You Don’t Know Me by Now” over a hundred times before. But one recent Sunday, the song came on and he heard something new. “I heard her thinking through an ultimatum now being laid down in the streets of this country,” he went on to write. Soon after, he got a call from one Ms. Patti LaBelle.

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