Kathy Sledge has learned what ‘We Are Family’ really means

When the Sister Sledge hit “We Are Family” came on during my wedding reception, my three sisters ran onto the dance floor.

The same thing happened at my all-girls high school reunion. As soon as the song came on, my former classmates formed a circle and danced to it.

The song’s lyrics about togetherness, sisterhood, and love pretty much summed up both of these milestone moments: We are family. I got all my sisters with me. We are family. Get up everybody and sing.

If only the backstory about what became of the Sister Sledge singing group were as upbeat. Real life hasn’t always imitated art.

For the readers who say, “Sister who?” Sister Sledge was a musical group that originated in the 1970s from Philly, made up of sisters Debbie, Joni, Kim, and Kathy. Even if you don’t know the group, you know the song “We Are Family.” It’s a classic. It’s a staple at family and school reunions. Basketball star LeBron James reportedly uses it at his Promise Schools.

“When families come together and you hear that song, you just instantly sing along,” WDAS radio legend Patty Jackson told me.

I’ll always think of the four original members of Sister Sledge as queens of the disco era. Beautiful and talented, when they were onstage dancing in their spandex outfits, they looked like they were having fun. The iconic girl group gave us such hit songs as “Greatest Dancer,” “Thinking of You,” and “Lost in Music.”

So when I ran into Kathy Sledge recently while on vacation, I couldn’t help but ask about what she’s been up to lately. She talked touring overseas and the Family Room talk show that she and daughter Kristen Gabrielle launched on Instagram during the COVID-19 shutdown. Sledge agreed to an interview once when we were back home.

“The world loves ‘We Are Family,’” Sledge told me last week when we connected by phone. “We were the family that brought the world together as a family — at the risk of almost losing our own. We faced so many challenges.”

Sledge told me she loved singing with the group, but “was given an ultimatum” after she expressed interest in producing a solo album. She decided to continue with her plans. Although she returned to the group many times over the years, that decision cost her.

“For 20 years, I wasn’t allowed to say I was of Sister Sledge or from Sister Sledge, which was hard,” she said.

At the same time, “we never want to look back and say, ‘I never tried.’ Who wants to do that?” Sledge said. “When I did return to the group, there were different configurations of it [with different members]. That is confusing.”

But through it all, Sledge — who some call the Michael Jackson of the group — kept singing and touring overseas. Along the way, she’s also made peace with her sisters, all of whom she still loves dearly. One sister, Joni Sledge, died in 2017 at the age of 60.

“We all go through adversities,” Sledge told me. “It’s about getting up when you’re knocked down. That’s an old cliché, but it’s so real and so true.”

The sisters were born into an entertainment family: Father Edwin Sledge was a “hoofer” who tap danced on Broadway, and mother Florez Kathy Sledge was an actress. They studied music with their Bethune-Cookman-educated grandmother, Viola Williams. During its early days, the group struggled. But fortunes changed for the better after Atlantic Records hooked the foursome up with Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, and songs from their epic 1979 We Are Family album began climbing record charts.

And the rest is, as they say, music history.

“What they meant to Philadelphia is that they represented us on an international platform,” recalled Lady B, of Classix 107.9.

“‘We Are Family’ is probably sung in every language at this point,” she said. “That alone says so much about their legacy and their history.”

On Friday, Sledge will perform a solo concert at the Rivers Casino at 8 p.m. as part of her We Are Family tour.

“I always respect the fact that the brand to me is something that I’m hugely proud of, so when we had our dynamics or when we had things in the past, sometimes it’s uncomfortable, but at the same time it is life,” Sledge said.

That’s something a whole lot of us can relate to.