An evening remembering the late Gospel Queen, village voice, and forever friend.
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If you saw Naomi Shelton here, you know how special she was, he said.
We want to celebrate all of that energy that she brought.
Shelton, who died last February, had reigned over LunAticos gospel brunches on alternate Sunday mornings since 2017.
But her greatest gift came from somewhere deep within.
I would tell her all these things that were going wrong, Julian told the crowd.
The ice machines broken.
Im getting a divorce.
She wanted to know all of it.
I first heard Naomi in 2008, when I was 28.
They stood out for two reasons.
One, they were just about the only Black people in the club.
Two, they were about three times our age.
She screamed and growled as she moved through the crowd, grabbing our hands while looking into our eyes.
For the next few years, that was where we spent our Friday nights.
Shed shuffle up to them and squeeze their hands, forging an intimate connection with them as she sang.
The Fat Cat was our boozy church, Friday nights our gospel Shabbat.
We may not have been religious, but we were religiously devoted to Naomi.
It sounds corny, but it wasnt.
She really meant it, Judy Gibbs, one of the Queens, recently told me.
She loved her audience.
I think she loved them before she even met them.
A favorite was Ill Take the Long Road, a paean to patience in the face of hardship.
Naomis long road began in 1942 in a tiny Alabama town called Midway.
Another life-changing encounter came along in 1971, when she got a call from a man she didnt know.
The man was Dennis Shelton, and he sang in a Harlem vocal group called Cortez & the Entertainers.
She would always encourage me, he told me.
She would say, Someones opinion of you is not your reality.
That check never came.
She let her down, Dennis said.
The music business let her down too.
Naomi didnt like to complain, but Dennis could see the disappointment on her face.
Watching Noami, he was deeply moved.
He asked her to sing on a couple of 45s, kicking off a long and fruitful collaboration.
She finally got to see the world, opening for Sharon Jones and headlining several European tours.
One evening in 2012, I brought a girl to the Fat Cat on a first date.
The girl loved Naomi, which meant that I could keep dating her.
A few years later, I married her.
But by then, Id all but stopped going to the club.
Around the same time, she nearly fainted on a stage in Boston.
She had to get a pacemaker, but she didnt complain.
God gave me a voice, shed say, and the doctors gave me a brand new beat.
Thats where she was living when I saw her perform for the last time.
It was March 7, 2020 Pars 40th birthday.
Hed rented out a club in Red Hook and put me in charge of arranging the entertainment.
There was no band he would rather see, he told me, than the Queens.
By then, Cliff had died.
So had Charles Bradley, at 68, and Sharon Jones, at 60.
But Naomi, now 77, wasstill here, doing what she loved.
Par couldnt remember ever seeing his mother dance like that.
None of us could have known it would be the last show Naomi would ever play.
Two days after the party, Naomi called to tell me that shed had a great time.
Ten months later, she was back in the hospital, the disease attacking her throat.
Richard Julian, the LunAtico proprietor, sat at her bedside.
She thought of her loved ones and her beloved audience first, even as she was slipping away.
Naomi died shortly after that conversation at the age of 78.
At the concert, Fred Thomas warmed up the band with Scribble Scrabble, an original Cliff Driver instrumental.
Dennis performed a couple of praise songs; at one point, he got down on his knees.
Yes, Judy said.
I cant honestly say I was okay with it, but Naomi was so open to everyone.
But this time, he said the world would come to her.
