She died on August 16, like Elvis Presley. Like him, Aretha Franklin was a child of the south, born in Memphis, Tennessee. Her father, the word-powerful Baptist preacher Clarence Lavaaughn Franklin, then a pop star among the preachers, converted his family of six to the north, moved to the industrial metropolis of Detroit.
And so Aretha is also a child of two cities who are crucial for the development of American pop music: the rock’n’roll was born in Memphis, here the heart of Southern Soul; In Detroit, the punk of Stooges exploded at the same time as the Motown Soul.
That was in 1967, and Aretha Franklin sang “Respect” in capital letters, called “Find out what it meeans to me”, and despite the sexual connotations, they knew properly – this was about the emancipation and self -determination of a woman, a black woman. “We are just looking in the mirror a second time,” said the singer at the time. “We start to appreciate ourselves as we are, to fall in love with our natural level.”
Ten years earlier, she had sung gospel in the church with her sisters. Singing gospel is hard competition. But it wasn’t a competition at all, and if so, then an unfair, because Aretha’s voice included four octaves, it was more powerful than any other, and it stayed for decades. Not only did the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson ended in the house of the Franklins, and Martin Luther King was also a confidante of her father. Nevertheless, Aretha exchanged “Jesus” against “baby” and took up first pop songs in 1960, harmless, pleasing songs according to the taste of time. Her producer John Hammond knew nothing to start with the singer, Bob Dylan was closer. Soul began to peel from the rhythm’n’blues, and it should take a few more years before Aretha Franklin switched from Columbia to Atlantic Records – where they finally recognized their outstanding talent and let them step into the light.
“I say a little prayer” is a pearl of the soul
“I never loved a man the way i love you” was the first album that counts. Jerry Wexler had led her to the label experienced with Soul, brought her to Alabama in January 1967, where the producer began with the no less legendary sound engineer Tom Dowd.
The studio musicians included asse of the Stax stable, such as the guitarist chips Moman, the saxophonist King Curtis and Spooner Oldham on E-Piano. Finally a producer was the understanding of what Aretha Franklin could and where it would carry her. Years later, Oldham said that when Aretha sat on the piano, he struck the first bars and made the voice, knew that they had found a jewel. Wexler knew that too. “Respect” he had her sing in New York. He had a feeling like no other.
Good and very good records followed, many also very successful. “Lady Soul” is great, also “Aretha Now”, both albums appeared in 1968, and on the latter she sings the Burt Bacharach composition “I Say a Little Prayer”, of which her creator says that there is only a definitive version of this euphoric longing classic, namely Arethas. And in fact, the gently stubborn and highest heights is one of the best that has been produced in the soul.
Live, on stage, it was even better. Aretha Franklin, who has only appeared in North America because of her fear of flying since the early 1980s, most recently only in Canadian casinos near her place of residence, actually needed nothing but her voice and wing.
She entered the stage in a very long fur coat and with a handbag that dangled on her wrist. She let the fur coat slide off her shoulders and fall on the floor, sat on her piano streak, put the handbag next to her on her planks and started. “She is the reason why women want to sing,” said soul singer Mary J. Blige when she was asked about her model a few years ago. “Aretha has everything, the strength, technology, and when it comes to getting involved with every fiber into his song, no one can keep up.”
In 1972 she got her fifth of 18 Grammys, for “Young, Gifted & Black”. The album was cool like its title. And just a few months later, Aretha Franklin released a double LP for which she received two Grammys, which was supposed to be her best-selling album, and which was perhaps an even bigger statement.
On the cover of “Amazing Grace” she wears an artistically stormed headscarf and jewelry that must have been created somewhere between hippie and Africa. It is a shocking, demanding, sensual gospel album in which the artist puts everything she shaped. The songs briefly close baptism and civil rights movement, reconcile tradition and departure. You are nice for crying. They leave you back as a happy wreck.
Aretha Franklin sang with George Michael and Annie Lennox
From the mid-1970s, Aretha Franklin’s records were more unobstructed, the very big songs were written and sung. At the beginning of the 1980s, Luther Vandross was the transition to Fairlight synthesizers and shoulder pads as a producer Aretha.
Curiously, the “Queen of Soul” celebrated a bit ancient today, because in their time there were greatest commercial successes, “Who’s Zoomin ‘Who?” shot into the charts worldwide. She sang with George Michael, Elton John and Annie Lennox. In 1987 she recorded another live gospel album and of course won a Grammy. The distances between the publications grew.
A picture that will remain is Aretha Franklin’s appearance in the inauguration of the first black president of the United States. A year later, her pancreas was diagnosed. She recorded two more plates. Death had to wait. Until August 16, the death day of the two largest American voices. Aretha Franklin was 76 years old.