Patricia Louise Holte was born May 24, 1944, in Eastwick, in Southwest Philadelphia. She began a solo career in 1977, after years fronting vocal groups, and built a run of 13 Top Ten R&B singles, including the quiet-storm standard "If Only You Knew" (1983) and later crossover pop hits "New Attitude" (1985) and "On My Own" (1986). In 1982 she released "The Best Is Yet to Come," a duet with jazz saxophonist Grover Washington Jr., written and produced by Philadelphia songwriters Cynthia Biggs and Dexter Wansel and released as a single on Washington's own Elektra label in early 1983. Grover Washington Jr.'s own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile. The song earned a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female.

LaBelle went on to sell more than 50 million records worldwide across her career. In 2017 she made a full return to music with Bel Hommage, a set of jazz standards released through Sony.

LaBelle's powerhouse vocal range, developed across decades of R&B and soul, gave her crossover-jazz duet with Grover Washington Jr. its emotional intensity, and her late-career turn to jazz standards on Bel Hommage showed a genuine, deliberate pivot toward the genre rather than a one-off collaboration.