Sade - Live At Montreux Jazz-Festival (1984) DVD9

When singer Sade and her circle of the sami name were establishing themselves, their record company, Epic, made a period of printing "Pronounced Shar-day" on the record labels of their releases. Soon enough, the medicine had no trouble with the right pronunciation. With the breakthrough -Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten single "Smooth Operator" propelling the debut Sade album, Diamond Life, to the same spot on the -Billboard 200 chart in 1985, the band fast came to epitomize soulful, adult-oriented, sophisti-pop.

Though only five more studio albums would be during the following 25 years, the band's following abated only slightly, and each issue was treated like a long-awaited public restoration of a secret yet beloved diva. Born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria, about 50 miles from Lagos, Sade was the girl of an African father and an English mother. After her father returned to England, Adu grew up on the North End of London. Developing a good singing part in her teens, Adu worked part-time jobs in and exterior of the music business. She listened to Ray Charles, Nina Simone, Al Green, Aretha Franklin, and Billie Holiday, and studied fashion design at St. Martin's School of Art in London while also doing some modeling on the side. Around 1980, she started singing harmony with a Latin funk group called Arriva. One of the more popular numbers that the group performed was an Adu original co-written with bandmember Ray St. John, "Smooth Operator." The next year, she linked the eight-piece funk band Pride as a background singer. Pride's opening acts often featured members of the circle in different combinations. Pride and their off-shoots performed often around London and moved up record company interest. Initially, the labels wanted to mark only Sade - technically a trio featuring Adu, Stuart Matthewman, and Paul Denman - while the unit of Pride wanted a deal. The members of Pride not involved in the Sade trio eventually told Adu, Matthewman, and Denman to go forward and signed a deal. Adding keyboardist Andrew Hale, Sade signed to the U.K. division of Epic Records. The band's debut album, Diamond Life (with overall production by Robin Millar), went Top Ten in the U.K. in late 1984. January 1985 saw the album released on CBS' Portrait label, and by spring, it had gone platinum on the intensity of the Top Ten singles "Smooth Operator" and "Fall on to Your Love." The 2nd album, Promise (1985), featured "Never as Well as the First Time" and "The Sweetest Taboo," the latter of which stayed on the U.S. Hot 100 for six months. Sade was so popular that some radio stations reinstated the '70s practice of playing album tracks, adding "Is It a Crime" and "Tar Baby" to their playlists. In 1986, Sade won a Grammy for Best New Artist. Sade's third album was 1988's Stronger Than Pride, and featured their first act one individual on the U.S. R&B chart, "Paradise," as good as "Nothing Can Occur Between Us" and "Keep Looking." The fourth Sade album didn't look for 4 years: 1992's Love Deluxe continued the unbroken run of multi-platinum Sade albums, spinning off the hits "No Ordinary Love," "Feel No Pain," and "Pearls." Matthewman, Denman, and Hale went on to other projects, including the low-key Sweetback, which released a self-titled album in 1996. Matthewman also played a major part in the development of Maxwell's career, providing instrumentation and production process for the R&B singer's first two albums. Sade eventually reconvened to take Lovers Rock in 2000. The principal single "By Your Side" was a moderate hit, peaking at number 18 on the adult contemporary chart; the next summer, Sade embarked on their first go in more than a ten and sold out many dates across America. In early 2002, they noted the tour's success by releasing a last album and DVD, Lovers Live. The mostly somber Soldier of Love was released in 2010.