An early collection of Patti Labelle’s greatest hits which features the track, “Little Girls” written by Allee Willis. Patti Labelle often performs this song live as it’s one of her favorites.
Allee Willis, Patti LaBelle and the song “Little Girls”
Submitted by denny
May 8th, 2011
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Allee Willis
Little Girls is one of my early songs and I remember thinking I was a really good songwriter when I wrote it. It was written for the actress Lesley Ann Warren, still one of my best friends. She was going on Johnny Carson and needed a song to sing. The lyric is very much her story being Cinderella and all (literally).
I was never crazy about the version of Little Girls on Patti’s LP, though I love her and this was the song that she gave me my start with. I was very grateful she recorded it. But you missed another song of mine on here, Come What May. i think they’re both among my favorite songs I’ve ever written. The latter was written with David Lasley, who I wrote the Maxine Nightengale hit, Lead Me On, with. David also wrote I Don’t Go Shopping on this album.
I produced a duet version of Come What May with Herb Alpert and Lani Hall a couple of years after Patti’s version came out.
I love that they misspelled LaBelle on Patti’s own album. The line at the bottom. the ‘B’ should be capitalized in LaBelle.
I wrote about being a Little Girl in my blog today: https://www.alleewillis.com/blog/2011/05/08/allee-willis’-kitsch-o’-the-day-–-happy-mothers-day-2/
Douglas Wood
I first discovered Patti LaBelle via Laura Nyro’s GONNA TAKE A MIRACLE album which really holds up. And Lani Hall’s first two albums were among my faves in high school and college. I’ll have to search out Allee’s songs for those two artists.
Allee Willis
I wrote all the print ads and radio commercials for Gonna Take a Miracle when I was a copywriter at Columbia Records in the early 70s. As for Lani Hall, I wrote and produced the entire Blush album.
Douglas Wood
I knew about the Laura Nyro gig but didn’t know about the Lani Hall album– I’ll have to track one down.
denny
DUH! Totally forgot about “Come What May”!
I still get freaked out that you wrote “Lead Me On”. A long time favorite!