American singer Melanie, born Melanie Safka-Schekeryk in Queens of Ukrainian and Italian parents, died Tuesday at 76. If you have no idea who she is, let me introduce you to her at twenty-three, performing with the Edwin Hawkins singers on a Dutch TV show. While the audience, more than half over sixty, looks as if it were lifted from a Monty Python sketch, they eventually come around.

So I will miss her terribly, and so will, among many, Keith Richards and Miley Cyrus, with whom she sang. She might well be singing with Johnny Cash right now; the two performed “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” together.

And if you have no idea who the Edwin Hawkins singers are, let me give you a wee hint from Sister Act 2. The young soloist is Ryan Toby.

But it was the choir backing Melanie, the Edwin Hawkins singers, who first released this song in 1967. Here they are. The lead singer is Dorothy Combs Thompson.

And, of course, there is no way anyone could stop Aretha Franklin from covering this marvelous hymn. When she did, it was with the legendary Mavis Staples. Someone put together this video, intercut with Aretha (call) and the wonderful images of the congregants (response). 

Melanie grew up in Queens, Dorothy in Texas, and Aretha is singing in the church where her father was pastor, in Detroit. We are in troubled times now, and perhaps music is one way we can navigate them. American music is so rich and so varied, but, after all, e pluribus unum–“In many, one.” Melanie’s song reminded me of that.