How women rocked our world

By Jacqueline Cutler © Zap2it

Bessie Smith to Lady Gaga is a wide swath in modern music, and “Women Who Rock” includes them and many in between Friday, Nov. 18, on PBS (check local listings).

“Rock and roll is a very wide river,” says filmmaker Carol Stein. She and Susan Wittenberg “wanted people who represented various eras,” Stein says.

“We were trying to figure it out by categories,”Wittenberg says. “It’s a big tent.”

Though there’s a chasm between Mahalia Jackson and Madonna, and both are featured in the film, the common denominator is music with attitude.

The documentary opens with James Brown singing, “This is a man’s world.” It soon cuts to Christina Aguilera belting the same song, and the irony is lost on no one.

Women are the top grossers in music in the 21st century, the documentary notes. But women’s rock roots go back to the very beginnings of the genre.

The catalyst for the film was an exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, which helped the filmmakers decide who should be in the documentary. Darlene Love was finally inducted in 2011, and though her legions of fans had been asking about her inclusion for years, Love was sanguine.

She, of the voice that never stops and who has been hitting the charts since 1961, is completely at peace with how long it took for her to be recognized in the museum.

“It bothered me at first, and then I didn’t think about it anymore,” she says.“You know what? I will be in there, in time.”

Stunning in a form-fitting satin dress — she kickboxes five days a week — Love talks with no regrets. Love sang backup for Elvis, Sinatra, Sam Cooke and many others. She’s been on Broadway and sees herself as a rock singer.

Darlene Love is featured on “Women Who Rock” Friday on PBS.

Love is probably best known for singing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” which she’s done annually since 1986 and always brings the house down.

Love has that effect on people.

She started singing in a girl group, the Blossoms, when she was 18.Years of doing backup for everyone from Tom Jones to Dionne Warwick followed.

While deciding whether she could go solo, she had a day job — cleaning houses. She was scrubbing a toilet in a woman’s house when her hit “Christmas” came on the radio. She knew then that she had to pursue a solo career.

She was 40 and dating Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers, and he nudged her to launch her solo career.

“He said, ‘Are you going to sing backup your whole life or go solo?’ So he put together a band for me,” Love says.

She did a show at The Roxy. She recalls singing “Hungry Heart,” and some skinny guy in the back of the room was whooping it up. She asked someone, “Who was that in the back cutting up so bad?” Bruce Springsteen, SteveVan Zandt told her.

Web Links

In “I Do Over” Sunday on WE: Women’s Entertainment, event planner Diann Valentine gives couples a second chance at a great wedding. Click on www. wetv.com/shows/i-do-over

Returning Tuesday on truTV, “Hardcore Pawn” follows the staff and customers of a Detroit pawnshop. Learn more at www. trutv.com/shows/hardcorepawn/index.html

BY LORI ACKEN

Food Network favorite Anne Burrell – Mario Batali’s former right-hand woman on “Iron Chef America” who now helms her own “Secrets of a Restaurant Chef” and “Worst Cooks in America” – is awed that the channel’s faithful fans have turned her and her pals into the rock stars of the gustatory set. So she decided to return the favor.

Burrell just wrapped a crosscountry signing tour for her first cookbook, “Cook Like a Rock Star,” which spotlights Burrell’s infectious wit and plucky personality – and her sincere belief that you can cook well, too, with a little friendly guidance.

“That’s what the message is – it’s about empowerment,” Burrell says. “It’s like, if chefs are the new rock stars and people are the chefs of their own kitchens, then I want them to be rock stars, too!”

Currently, Burrell can be seen battling her fellow Food Network rock stars and other celebrity culinarians on “The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs”

– a giant slice of food-TV fans paradise that she calls “the hardest thing I’ve done in my career.”

“(People) would say, ‘Well, who’s your biggest competition?’

” Burrell explains, “and I would say, ‘Every single person here!’ Because it wasn’t like, ‘Here, cook something delicious in a real kitchen environment.’

You’re cooking under extreme conditions with crazy ingredients, and anyone can have a brilliant or terrible day.”