Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (16 page)

“It took Aretha a while to leave Columbia for Atlantic,” said Carolyn, “because Columbia was the most prestigious label. I think she felt like she’d be giving up status. But Aretha was also aware of the current market, and she decided that Columbia wasn’t. Ironically, when she gave up the idea of ‘crossing over’ into the mainstream with jazzy standards à la Ella or Sarah and Dinah, that’s when she crossed over the most. That’s because she became more fully herself.”

As far as studios went, Wexler prevailed, convincing Ted and Aretha that Muscle Shoals was the place where magic was being
made. They were set to meet there at the end of January 1967. Hopes, confidence, and expectations were all high.

“I didn’t see how anything could go wrong,” said Wexler.

And then everything did.

“Before we got to Muscle Shoals, Aretha had worked out the pattern for the songs on her Fender Rhodes at home,” Wexler explained. “She and her sisters worked out the background parts. The plan was to have her come into the studio, show that bad Muscle Shoals rhythm section her outline, and let them jam around her. I thought it was important not to have an all-Caucasian band so I made sure to get the Memphis Horns and Bowlegs Miller. I loved all the material Ted and Aretha brought—Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ and ‘Good Times,’ Otis’s ‘Respect,’ and the three Aretha tunes—‘Dr. Feelgood,’ ‘Don’t Let Me Lose This Dream,’ and ‘Baby, Baby, Baby,’ written with Carolyn.”

Wexler loved King Curtis, who, along with Motown’s Junior Walker, was the reigning king of R&B tenor saxophonists. Beyond his instrumental prowess, King was a prolific writer and arranger. He’d soon become Aretha’s musical director. For this first record, Wexler gave Aretha one of King’s best, “Soul Serenade,” a song Curtis had written with Luther Dixon, whose “Blue Holiday” Aretha had sung on Columbia.

“The first day started off fine,” Wexler remembered. “We had Chips Moman and Jimmy Johnson on guitar, Roger Hawkins on drums, and Tommy Cogbill on bass. Spooner Oldham knocked everyone out—including Aretha—with those opening chords on electric piano. Those were some mournfully funky riffs that became a permanent part of the song. Aretha was on acoustic piano, and because she had walked in the door with the groove in hand, it happened quickly.”

“She was a very shy and withdrawn woman,” Roger Hawkins told me. “She called everyone ‘Mister’ and we called her ‘Miss Franklin.’ There was no small talk. She was all business. That made me nervous because mostly we’d done sessions with singers who picked up our relaxed manner right away. Not Aretha. She stayed
to herself. But when she sat down at the piano and began to hit those chords and that sound came out of her mouth, nothing mattered. I’ve heard a lot of soul singing in my time, but nothing like that.”

“Aretha sang it with the conviction of a saint,” said Dan Penn, who was at the session, where, on the spot, he and Chips Moman wrote “Do Right Woman—Do Right Man,” a song that would eventually be included on the record.

“Before she started playing we were worried she might have qualms about playing with a white rhythm section,” said Jimmy Johnson, “but when we all got to grooving, it was nothing but a party. She didn’t like the support we gave her—she
loved
it. She knew that, color be damned, we were all coming from the same place. The woman just sang—and sang—and sang some more. We were hysterically happy, giddy happy, like schoolchildren, running into the studio to hear the playback. To the last man, we realized we were watching the birth of a superstar. The experience gave joy new meaning.”

Until the joy stopped and the heavy drama started.

“My plan was to do everything live,” said Wexler. “Have Aretha and the musicians playing together in real time. Of course, Rick Hall was there because we were using his studio. There had been tension between me and Rick earlier about Clarence Carter, a big-selling R-and-B artist with hits like ‘Slip Away’ and ‘Patches.’ Hall stole him from us. But I put that aside for the sake of having a smooth Aretha session. The euphoria of these first takes of ‘I Never Loved a Man’ led to some celebratory drinking that night. I had left the studio before it got bad, but apparently it got ugly between Ted and Rick Hall.”

“I confess that I’d been doing some drinking,” Hall told me, “but so had Ted. And so had Aretha. No one was in his or her right mind. It began when one of the white horn players, who had also been drinking, got into some argument with Ted. Whether the racial stuff started with Ted or the trumpet player, I don’t know. But it was there. So Ted stormed out of the session and took Aretha
with him. That was a crying shame ’cause the session had gone so well. I knew Wexler, who was my client, would be pissed out of his mind. So I went to Ted and Aretha’s room to try and make it right. I made it worse. Ted didn’t wanna hear any explanations but I gave ’em anyway. That just led to a bunch more yelling with Ted telling me how he never should have brought his wife down to Alabama to play with these rednecks.

“ ‘Who you calling a redneck?’ I said.

“ ‘Who you calling a nigger?’

“ ‘I’d never use that word.’

“ ‘But you were thinking it, weren’t you?’

“ ‘I was just thinking that you should go fuck yourself.’ That led to Ted taking a swing at me and I swung back and we both landed a couple of good blows and before I knew it, I was in a full-blown fistfight with Ted White.”

“The very thing I had worked so hard to avoid was racial animus,” said Wexler, “and that’s exactly what the night session had excited. Everyone was playing the race card. At the motel there was screaming and yelling and doors slamming. At six in the morning I was in Ted and Aretha’s room trying to undo what Rick had done. Ted, though, could not be consoled. ‘You were the one who said Muscle Shoals was soul paradise,’ he said. ‘Far as I can see, Muscle Shoals is soul shit. These honkies down here are some nasty motherfuckers. I will never submit my wife to circumstances like these. We’re outta here.’

“ ‘But what about the schedule?’ I asked. ‘We were going to do all her vocals this week and the sweetening next week. All we have in the can is one completed song—“I Never Loved”—and the beginning of “Do Right Man.” That’s all I got.’

“ ‘What you really got, Wexler,’ said Ted, ‘is one big fuckin’ mess on your hands. I’m not sure this lady is ever gonna record for Atlantic again.’ And with that, he showed me the door.”

When Aretha wrote about the incident, it was entirely different. She said she couldn’t recall any details and wasn’t in the room where Hall and White came to blows. She knew there had been
discord and arguments intense enough to make her want to leave. But in Aretha’s account, she left on her own, not with Ted. She packed up and headed out to the airport.

“I’ve never been so frustrated in my life,” said Wexler. “In all my years in the record business, I had never experienced a better session. I knew we had a goddamn smash and now it looked like it was all in vain. The singer’s husband/manager gave indications that he wanted out of the deal. He had physically fought the studio owner. He and Aretha had run out of Muscle Shoals after the very first day. I was crushed.

“When I got back to New York, Ahmet said I looked like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I said I was on the verge of what I was convinced could be one of the most important and successful records in Atlantic history and suddenly it had all fallen apart. I couldn’t let that happen. I called Ted but couldn’t get through. Through the grapevine I’d heard that [Aretha] was back in Detroit—without Ted. I got a number. Carolyn answered. She said she couldn’t tell me anything—that her sister needed some time alone.”

“After that Muscle Shoals incident,” said Carolyn, “I was sure that Aretha and Ted were splitsville. She felt that he had undermined the session. She said he was drunk half the time and belligerent as hell. She said she didn’t want to see him again.”

“I was going crazy,” said Wexler. “I had disc jockeys calling her, I had preachers calling her, I was on the verge of calling out the FBI and Canadian Mounties. At the same time, I had a completed song—‘I Never Loved a Man’—but only half of another. We’d only begun to cut the song that Dan and Chips wrote in the studio, ‘Do Right Woman—Do Right Man.’ There was no vocal. Where was my artist? Where was her manager? Were they really leaving the label before we even got started?

“I finally got Ted White on the phone. He was still mad as a motherfucker. I wanted to know what was happening. He had nothing but scorn. He was still seething about Rick Hall and Muscle
Shoals and my insistence that we record there. I apologized for Hall for the twentieth time but that made no difference. I told him that the past was the past and we had a hit on our hands but I needed Aretha back in the studio. He said something that surprised me: ‘I’m not even sure I’m her manager. I can’t control her. No one can.’

“So with the artist missing and management in doubt, what was I supposed to do? I decided, in my typical way, to leap before looking. I decided to act. I had this one song that I knew was cooking. I made a couple of dozen acetate copies of ‘I Never Loved a Man’ for DJs in key markets. These were guys I could count on. They’d let me know if I had a smash or whether I was simply jerking off. Within hours, I got the response I needed—they loved it, their listeners loved it, the phone lines started burning up. Airplay was immediate, but what about sales?

“Well, there are two sides on a forty-five single, and I had only one. I needed another song. Our distributors, who had heard ‘I Never Loved’ on the radio, started screaming for product. They knew me as an aggressive marketer and wanted to know what the fuck was wrong. I wasn’t about to tell them that I had lost control of my artist. All I could say was ‘Stand by.’ Meanwhile, every minute the record was being played on the radio but was unavailable in stores, we were losing money. To be perfectly honest, the other thought I had was this—if I could get Aretha Franklin on the pop charts and establish her as a bestselling act, the value of Atlantic would jump considerably and my own dream of selling more easily realized. In every possible way, I was motivated.

“Ten days passed, ten of the most difficult days of my life, before I finally got the call.

“ ‘Mr. Wexler, it’s Miss Franklin calling. I’m ready to record. However, I won’t be recording in Muscle Shoals. I will be recording in New York. I know you have studios in New York.’

“ ‘Yes, we do. What about the band?’

“ ‘Bring up the boys from Muscle Shoals. They understood me. As far as the backgrounds go, I’ll be with my sisters.’

“ ‘Beautiful.’ ”

“I remember arriving in New York with Aretha,” said Carolyn, “and feeling like we were all on a mission. We realized that our sister was on the brink of letting the world know what we had always known—that she was hands-down the scariest singer in the world. When she was in her element, no one could touch her. Well, we were her element. We arrived in New York as a family united, realizing that her problems with Ted had her on edge. Both in and out of the studio, she needed our support.”

“I think of Aretha as Our Lady of Mysterious Sorrows,” Wexler wrote in his memoir,
Rhythm and the Blues.
“Her eyes are incredible, luminous eyes covering inexplicable pain. Her depressions could be as deep as the dark sea. I don’t pretend to know the sources of her anguish, but anguish surrounds Aretha as surely as the glory of her musical aura.”

According to Wexler, when Aretha resurfaced and showed up at the Atlantic studios at 1841 Broadway in midtown Manhattan, Ted was not with her, only her sisters. She gave no apologies or explanations about where she had been.

“She came loaded for bear,” said Tommy Dowd, the Atlantic engineer who was at the controls. “She went right for the piano, where, without a word, she played piano over the existing ‘Do Right’ track. She and Erma and Carolyn laid down the vocal harmonies, an arrangement from heaven. All that was left was Aretha’s vocal. She ran it down once. Thank God I had pressed that Record button, because the rundown was unworldly. There was a calmness about her delivery, an attitude that said,
Brother, I own this song, I’m gonna take my time, and I’m gonna drill it into your soul.
When she was through, there was nothing to do but shake your head in wonder.”

“When it came to producing Aretha’s vocals,” said Wexler, “it was the same as Ray Charles. I didn’t say a word. She didn’t need my critique. She didn’t need anyone’s critique. Her taste in vocal riffs and licks was absolutely flawless. She was only twenty-four
and yet had the poise, authority, and confidence of someone who had been singing for sixty years. Her voice was young and vital, but it also came from a place of ancient secret wisdom.”

“The method she’d begun in Muscle Shoals was continued in New York,” Dowd explained. “She played the instrumentals with the band while singing a scratch vocal to help the musicians understand exactly how she was going to tell the story. We’d then throw away the scratch vocal, and, with an instrumental take that was acceptable to her, she went into the studio to sing the lead to track. That was the moment of truth. She was out there alone on the other side of the glass; I was behind the board in the control booth with Wexler hovering over me and all the musicians gathered around. After a couple of takes, she nailed ‘Do Right’ for all time. We were speechless. We were stunned. We knew we were in the presence of rare and immortal greatness.”

“Do Right Woman—Do Right Man” was cut on February 8, 1967. Two days later Wexler released it as the B side to “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You).” The response was immediate. “I Never Loved” flew to the top of the R&B charts and quickly crossed over, where it went top-ten pop and competed successfully with the Beatles’ “Penny Lane,” the Supremes’ “Love Is Here and Now You’re Gone,” the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday,” and the Turtles’ “Happy Together.” It took Atlantic two weeks to do what Columbia had not been able to do in five years—turn Aretha Franklin into a superstar. “I Never Loved” became the first million-seller record of her career.

Cecil thought that the success of the first single helped heal Ted and Aretha’s marriage. “After all, it was Ted’s writer, Ronnie Shannon, who wrote the song, and it was Ted who brought the song to Aretha. That was the song that blew open the door. Aretha was always cognizant of that fact. It made her think that maybe, despite everything, she needed Ted to get where she was going. But that was just the beginning. That first single—‘I Never Loved’ and ‘Do Right’—was nothing compared to the next one with ‘Respect’
and ‘Dr. Feelgood.’ The second single put her into orbit. Things went crazy after those songs hit. Everyone in the world wanted her, and she required help.”