Chaka Khan: Swimming in Every Musical Ocean

Thinking about the life of Chaka Khan so far is like trying to read a really thick, epic novel in an hour. It’s some life, that life.

“More like two lives,” said the woman once dubbed the Queen of Funk in a recent phone interview. “Probably more than two.”

Khan will share some of the musical highlights of that life when the 10-time Grammy award-winning singer makes her solo debut in the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall on Dec. 31, kicking off the center’s New Year’s Eve celebration.

When you’re in the middle of thinking thoughts about the past, present and future, you could do worse than letting Khan’s songs wash over you. She and the songs, especially those from her rise to big-time stardom with the group Rufus — “I’m Every Woman,” “I Feel For You,” “Do You Love What You Feel,” “Tell Me Something Good” — are instantly recognizable. They filled the disco air at Mike O’Harro’s legendary Tramps in Georgetown, and everywhere else in the land of America, for nights on end.

The life is a Chicago girl’s. Born Yvette Marie Stevens in Hyde Park, she was influenced by a grandmother who loved jazz. “I heard lots of Ella around the house,” she said. She formed an all-girl singing group, the Crystallettes, in the neighborhood at age 11. By the early 1970s, she was working with Chicago groups like Baby Huey and the Babysitters, then was spotted by a member of the rising funk band Rufus.

The rest, you could say, is history. But, really, it’s just the beginning. Throw in two marriages, three children, acknowledged bouts with addiction, a kind of diva status that rivaled the other queens of the times (Aretha, Patti LaBelle, Whitney Houston), stints of living in Germany and England and enough awards to blind even the most modest eyes.

On paper, it sounds ritzy and glitzy, and probably justifiably dramatic. At its center, though, is always the music — all kinds of music, almost every kind that’s out there (except perhaps polka), including country, funk, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, Motown, jazz, folk and, yes, “I have too done classical music.”

Divas are, of course, notoriously difficult to deal with, yet Khan has managed to collaborate with countless top musicians in a variety of genres: Robert Palmer, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder (that’s him playing the harmonica on “I Feel For You”), Ry Cooder and a host of others. She swims in every musical ocean.

The woman on the phone doesn’t sound regal. She has all the attributes of someone deliciously contradictory: accessible, articulate, warm, funny (with a little salty sailor talk in her), down to earth. Asked to define “funk,” she laughed and said, “I have no idea,” but then expressed the all-embracing notion that funk is wide as a wing of wonder, about motion and moving, rhythm and a certain flamboyant style.

If you go on that magical musical time machine called YouTube, she’s represented at all phases of her career, a fabulous presence — her famous blossoming crowns of hair, those freckles on a beautiful face, the stylings, all sorts of songs. There’s the spectacular “I’m Every Woman” duet with Whitney Houston, for instance. “That whole thing, she and her daughter, such a tragedy. I know how that happens, what it can do to you, believe me,” said Khan.

“You know, you start out, and all of that being young, and the songs. And I’ve always wanted just to do the music justice, even if, well, like that song ‘I’m Every Woman.’ And I thought, ‘I’m every woman? What the hell do I know? But if you give it everything you have, that’s what I tried to do.”

Her songs, for me, have always been there, on the radio, on the jukeboxes, but I never thought of her broad range until recently. One time, my neighbor in Lanier Heights, Mickey Collins, and I were talking about the song “My Funny Valentine.” While we both agreed that the song was one of the greatest jazz-fueled love songs ever, we disagreed about its best interpreter. I proffered the usual suspects: Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and others. “Naw,” Mickey said. “It’ll come to me.” A few days later, he came out of his door and said, “Two words: Chaka Khan.”

I have to agree after hearing and seeing her version. I shared the story with her.

Truth is, jazz is something special for and to her. You can hear it like a sneaky foray into scatting on some of her hits, and especially on the amazing video of her singing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” with the Funk Brothers from the movie “Standing in the Shadows of Motown,” bridging the road between jazz and funk.

“Jazz is my heart. Nobody scats much any more. It’s pure, it’s hard to do and it’s free and disciplined at the same time.”

On New Year’s Eve, you’ll be able to hear part of her musical life — and parts of ours. Who knows, maybe she’ll do “My Funny Valentine.”