VH1 Divas Sing Duets

Divas from many decades will take the stage in Las Vegas Thursday night when VH1 airs its annual Diva Concert live.

The show is hosted by Queen Latifah and features, among others, Beyonce Knowles from Destiny's Child, Lisa Marie Presley and Chaka Khan, who after a quarter century of "Diva-dom" is still going strong.

The show is a benefit for VH1's Save The Music Foundation of which The Early Show is a partner.

Chaka Khan will be singing her hits, but the shows title is "Diva Duets," and that's what she's looking forward to.

"What's fun is being onstage and singing to people. There's nothing like it," she says. "Mary J. And I are going to do a duet. Mary J. Blige, all of us, will get to sing with each other, as well."

Since the show's inception in 1998, it's the surprise duets that have always been the highlight. That first year, Aretha Franklin and Mariah Carey paired up for "Chain of Fools."

In 1999, Tina Turner, Cher, and guest male diva Elton John brought down the house with "Proud Mary."

Whitney Houston and Mary J. Blige performed their first diva duet that same year and provided an energetic encore in 2002.

Houston and Blige will also take the stage on Thursday night's show but not together. Blige, who is making her fourth diva appearance, says these shows are always special.

Blige says, "It just means that the people are recognizing you for your hard work, not for your being a mean person, or a b-i-t-c-h because that's what they think of a diva as, but just as somebody who really paid their dues."

Ashanti is the youngest diva on Thursday night's broadcast, but she's not the newest.

During the show, VH1 will announce the winner of its idol-making reality show "Born to Diva" from among the three finalists. The winner will get to sing on the air.

But it's the chance to meet the original artists that has finalist Towanda Cofield excited.

She says, "Whitney Houston has been No.1 on my list. I love Whitney Houston. Her voice. The way sings. She doesn't have to do a lot of acrobats. It just comes from within."

The show's Las Vegas locale allows Celine Dion to make a special guest appearance. She'll stop by before her regular show at Caesar's Palace.

Pop diva Jewel will be singing her new single "Intuition," even though she isn't sure the diva title fits.

She says, "Diva means a lot of things. I think it's for Maria Callas, and Aretha Franklin. Which means I really shouldn't be here. But it's fun to be invited."

And Jewel knows that with the invitation comes expectations.

She says, "I think everything's divas. It's going to be all this backstage stuff. And it isn't -like everybody seems really, really nice. Everybody's really nice to work with. For me, it's the first time I'm doing something with dancers going on. I thought of it with all the Jewel look-alikes. It's fun to be involved creatively in that kind of thing because I don't usually do it."

Jewel will be singing on The Early Show plaza on Tuesday, May 27. So if you are in New York City, you can see her live then.