Chaka Khan - A Profile

Chaka Khan is celebrating her 70th birthday today so as a tribute we have put together a playlist of 40 of, what we consider, her best recordings. Some of her mid 80s recordings and obvious hits have been deliberately omitted as we've all heard these a million times!

Having performed with local Chicago groups from around 1969, Chaka replaced Paulette McWilliams in Rufus in 1972 recording five albums with them before going solo in 1978 but appeared on a further three up to 1983. Her first solo hit was "I'm Every Woman" in 1978 (R&B #1 / Hot 100 #23) but her biggest hit was "I Feel For You" reaching #1 R&B and #3 Hot 100.

It may come as a surprise to discover that, in a recording career spanning 50 years, she has had only 2 US Top 40 solo pop hits with "I'm Every Woman" (1978) and "I Feel For You" (1984). She achieved seven with Rufus. In the UK she has fared a little better with those two along with "This Is My Night" (1984), "Eye To Eye" (1985) and two remixes of "I'm Every Woman" and "Ain't Nobody" all being UK Top 20 pop hits. In the R&B chart she has had a dozen Top 20 hits with eight of them being top 10 and three #1s.

Khan has recorded around fifteen solo albums (13 studio and 2 live) plus eight with Rufus between 1974-83. She has won ten Grammys and sold an estimated 70m records.

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