Chaka-full of spunk

Anne Hosier

Friday, July 25, 1997 | 9:06 a.m.

Chaka Khan has had an epiphany: She's sick of being told what she can and can't do.

So, following the November release of her latest album, "Epiphany: The Best of Chaka Khan" on Reprise/Warner, the queen of fusion is going solo.

"I'm now no longer with my record company," Khan says. "I'm now a free agent, and I'm interested in building my own empire."

Khan -- who will be performing tonight at the Las Vegas Hilton -- has spent the last quarter-century building her reputation as a performer of almost unparalleled versatility. A singer with a unique ability to cross over among rhythm & blues, jazz, pop, soul and funk, Khan's voice sometimes takes the spotlight, as in songs like "I Feel For You," and other times provides the harmonies for another artist, as in "Higher Love," which she recorded with Steve Winwood.

Her voice inspired Stevie Wonder to write music for her to record, and the roster of artists she's performed with reads like a who's who of musical legends: Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Hornsby, Quincy Jones.

"She has such an incredible voice," says J.R. Reynolds, rhythm and blues editor for Billboard magazine. "She's one of the most prolific R&B vocalists of our time."

Given Khan's ability to perform alongside strong male vocalists without fading into the background, it wasn't surprising that she was Robert Palmer's first choice to sing his duet, "Addicted to Love," when he first recorded it in the late '80s.

"When I met him, we sort of clicked," Khan says. The pair cut the track, with Khan providing lead vocals and arranging the background vocals. "It sounded brilliant," she said. Figuring her record company executives would agree, Khan proudly played it for them. But she wasn't prepared for their response.

"The record company said 'absolutely not,' " she recalls. "So he had to re-record the song, put other voices on my voices. It was ludicrous, just horrible." For Khan, it was the beginning of the end. "That's when the thunder struck me, and that's when I first started working toward being free."

Do it yourself career

To that end, Khan created her own production management company, Raven Productions, Inc. Through the company, Khan plans to develop her own label and foster some new talent, says Joan Scott, Raven's vice president of promotions and marketing.

The singer is also working on an autobiography and a television show, which will be a "Chaka Khan and Friends" sort of thing, Scott adds. Of the other plans she has in the works, Khan says: "I don't want to go into detail on these because they're not fixed or final yet." However, one involves the guy with the unpronounceable name.

"Prince" -- Khan doesn't bother with the irritating "Artist Formerly Known As" prefix -- "and I are talking about doing some things together -- rock and gospel" She adds: "I've got lots of people backing me on projects."

Khan also plans to churn out subsequent volumes in the Epiphany series. "What I want to do in future Epiphany(s) is to rediscover some of the gems that were hidden behind album covers, and the singles that overpowered them, (like) "Father He Said" ... "Your Smile," things like that, beauties that weren't singles and just sort of got passed over." However, Reprise/Warner now owns the rights to many of Khan's past hits. And it isn't entirely clear how her newfound independence will mesh with the record company's agenda.

Scott, who says only that Khan has "taken a firmer hand in her recording career," offers this interpretation of the star's relationship with her former record company: "As for her going out on her own, it was totally amicable. They've been just beautiful to her."

Shaking the shackles

But Khan has a more definitive view of the music industry's overall treatment of stars: "I felt like Harriet Tubman or something when it was all over ... Prince had a good point when he said 'enslaved,' because he was like, 'it's a form of slavery.' " She adds: "I'm looking into doing my own stuff and making my own money, without the middle man."

Rising to stardom in the mid-70s as the lead singer of the band Rufus, Khan quickly became an icon to a generation with hits like "You Got the Love," and "Sweet Thing." By 1978, the singer had gone solo, weighing in with the hit "I'm Every Woman," which Oprah Winfrey subsequently used as her theme song. (Khan didn't write the song -- "If I'd written the sucker, I'd have been rich" -- nor did she perform the version Oprah used. But Khan is philosophical about it: "It still kept me on the map, which is cool. I feel really lucky that way as a seasoned artist.")

During the '70s and '80s, Khan's talent proved a commercial gold mine, netting her seven gold and two platinum albums, as well as 50 Billboard chart appearances during 12 consecutive years, from '74 to '86. In today's "crazy radio environment, where younger and trendier is better," however, it's not as easy as it once was for longtime artists like Khan to break through on mainstream radio, Billboard's Reynolds notes.

"She has a significant adult consumer following, but unfortunately in R&B these days, the younger generation are not as quick to embrace veteran artists like Chaka." Still, Khan insists that her greatest hits and remix albums continue to draw a younger crowd. "I'm not a remix fan," she admits, referring to an album released during the '80s. "It was horrible. I hated it. But what it did do was get a lot of younger people (interested)."

Extending her reach

More recently, Khan has been busy branching out into other areas, loaning her voice to movie soundtracks like "Waiting to Exhale," "Clockers," and "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar." And her performance in the London-based musical "Mama I Want To Sing," earned her a Capital Listeners' Radio Poll Award for Best Actress earlier this year.

In the four years prior to the release of Epiphany, however, Khan took an extended break from making albums. "I just needed a new outlook, I needed some new scenery, I needed to meet some new people, expand my horizons a bit, wake up some dead brain cells. So that's what I've been doing."

Shuffling between her homes in England and Germany, Khan has been spending a lot of time with her family, which includes her 5-year-old granddaughter -- yes, Chaka Khan's a grandma!-- two grown children, her manager sister and financial manager mother. "Music's not my total life," she says. "I have a very rich, rich family life."

In fact, the two are inextricably intertwined. As the child, Khan was subjected to a great deal of opera by her mother, and grew to love it. Her father, whom she describes as a "bebopper" turned her on to jazz, particularly the music of Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. Khan subsequently had opportunities to collaborate with both, and says: "That was the pinnacle of my career."

Early influences

Khan was born Yvette Marie Stevens in Great Lakes, Ill., near a military base. However, after her father was discharged from the Air Force, the family moved into the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. There, Khan and some girlfriends formed a music group they called "Shades of Black."

The girls became interested in Yoruba, a West African religion, which Khan describes as being similar to Buddhism, and subsequently converted to it. "And we were reborn." In the process, the 16-year-old Khan was christened with a long African name that she later shortened to Chaka. She took the last name Khan after she married a man whose family came from Bombay, India.

During Khan's childhood, her father moved to an island off the coast of Spain and became a photographer. The photos he sent back to his daughter inspired her to see the world. "My dad is actually the one who sparked the whole traveling thing," she says. "And it sort of worked out for me."

Khan began her travels by running away from home at 16. The move cost her the chance to finish high school. "I was going to go back to school," Khan recalls, adding that she loved biology, and had aspired to be, among other things, a veterinarian, a pediatrician, an anthropologist, and a forensic scientist. But a record deal came along before she had a chance to re-enroll in high school, and her fate was cast.

Now, as an adult, Khan says "I feel like I'm back home again. Once I became an adult and had kids, that teen-aged s--t just flies out the window. You start seeing with your mother's eyes."

Spending time with her family has helped Khan get her "foundations really strong," and prepare her to record her latest album. "I'm a new person now -- not a new person -- but I'm bigger, I'm more. It's the best move I ever made."

Of the name she selected for her latest album, Khan says: "It was an epiphany to me that I have been in the business 25 years."

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