The organizers of the Grammy Awards quickly put together a tribute for her, and the sudden and shocking weight loss displayed in a taped thank-you played during the ceremony in February only kept advance-obituary writers scrambling for whatever superlatives were left to describe a career that has included 18 Grammys, upward of 75 million records sold, being the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. But now there she sat at a front table, in a flowing cream-­colored silk Naeem Khan gown, with the kind of resurrection glow you see on stained-glass windows in churches.

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