After many years in the background, singer Darlene Love is enjoying her moment in the sun. (Photo courtesy Project Publicity)

Darlene Love

 

Saturday, Dec. 19

 

8 p.m.

 

The Howard Theatre

 

620 T St., N.W.

 

VIP tickets: $80

 

General admission $45 in advance/$50 day of

With Christmas on the horizon, chances are if Christmas music is being played, Darlene Love’s 1963 “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” is in the rotation, as the song has been one of the most popular songs of the season for decades. David Letterman calls it his favorite song and before retiring, would have Love come on his show and kick-off the Christmas season with a live rendition.

“Dave is the one who made it so popular around the world,” Love says. “When it’s this close to Christmas, I think the song means even more to people. I love this time of year. I really enjoy the closeness of family and people are in a giving mood, are happy and jovial. It’s a very special time for me.”

Love rose to prominence in the ’60s as a session vocalist and although she supported all the great singers in Phil Spector’s arsenal of performers with her glorious background vocals—including tunes such as “He’s a Rebel,” “He’s Sure the Boy I Love,” “Be My Baby” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”—she was rarely credited on the liner notes of the records.

The performers all knew and adored her, but the public wasn’t privy to just how incredible she was.

“I wasn’t the first one that it happened to; you just never heard about it with a lot of us. Phil Spector was a rising producer who became incredibly successful who started his own empire and knew how to succeed,” she says. “I couldn’t sign work because of him recording my voice as the Crystals and I couldn’t claim ‘He’s A Rebel’ or ‘He’s Sure The Boy I Love’ as my own, because my name wasn’t on there. That kept me from finding work.”

Then Letterman began championing the Christmas tune, she took a role as Murtaugh’s wife in the “Lethal Weapon” movies, and did a turn on Broadway in “Leader of the Pack,” and Love eventually skyrocketed to the fame she deserved.

Love is ranked No. 84 on Rolling Stone’s top 100 singers of all-time; she was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2011 and was one of the subjects of the 2014 Oscar-winning documentary, “20 Feet From Stardom,” which showed an in-depth illustration of Love’s storied musical career as a background singer. Her speech at the Oscars was one of the most memorable of the last decade and the soulful singer has never been in greater demand.

“When I started, I thought I would be done singing by the time I was 50. You don’t think you could keep it up or that people would still love the music, but they do,” the 73-year-old says. “I think the biggest reason they still come out is that I stay true to the songs. I don’t change how I sing them and they are even more powerful today because my voice is more powerful.”

Fans can check that out for themselves when the legendary Love plays the Howard Theatre on Saturday, Dec. 19.

“We’re having so much fun with this show, everywhere we’ve been,” Love says. “My show is very energetic. Many women don’t do these high-energy shows—maybe Tina Turner or Joan Jett—but mine it so high energy. We play some new songs, do some Christmas songs and of course, many of the classics people love.”

Her favorite thing about being on stage is seeing the generations of fans who come out and sing along with her.

“It’s so great to see people are bringing their children and they are bringing their children, it doesn’t get any better than that,” Love says. “I think the younger generation wants to hear great songs, great lyrics and great melodies that they want to sing along with. They do that when they come to my show.”

Last year, the singer released new material with the album, “Introducing Darlene Love,” produced by Love’s longtime friend and advocate Steven Van Zandt.

“It’s been time to do this for a while, but I couldn’t find anyone to do it, that was the problem. Record companies don’t want to record older artists because they think there’s no place for them,” she says. “Steve wanted to record to sound like the music I recorded in the ’60s, and that’s the beauty of it. People may think they have heard these songs before because they sound as if they are from that era.”

Love will be opening her show at the Howard with one of the new tunes and hopes to see many people come out and celebrate Christmas with her.

“I always tell my audiences to come with the sense that they’re going to be entertained and I will life their spirits up. It’s my job to life their spirits up, so they will leave the show saying we had a good time,” Love says. “If I’m having fun, they will have fun. They know just how far to go with me.”