Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (27 page)

“What about the rest of
Amazing Grace
?” I asked Marvin.

“If you ask true lovers of soul what’s my best record, the answer is usually
What’s Going On.
And if you ask true lovers of gospel what’s the best record, the answer is
Amazing Grace.
Ask true
Aretha fans to name her best album, and the answer is the same—
Amazing Grace
. No one loves ‘Respect’ and ‘Natural Woman’ and ‘Chain of Fools’ more than me.
Sparkle
turned me green with envy. Curtis Mayfield got to write and produce an entire album on Aretha! I’d die for that chance. But no matter how marvelous that material, none of it reaches the level of
Amazing Grace.
I don’t think I’m alone in saying that
Amazing Grace
is Aretha’s singular masterpiece. The musicians I respect the most say the same thing. It’s her greatest work. It’s the Aretha album I cherish most.”

“I look at
Amazing Grace
as an interlude in her life,” said brother Cecil. “It’s a beautiful and healing interlude that I wish had been longer. It came at just the right time. When Aretha had signed with Atlantic, she hit the ground running. The first record was a hit—and so was the second and third and so on. She took off like a rocket. At the same time, she was all messed up in a negative marriage. She and Ted were like oil and water. That relationship was hellish. But she thought she needed him and wouldn’t let him go. He knew he needed her and he wouldn’t let her go. They’d break up to make up and make up to break up. It was nuts. The drinking got out of control, the press got ugly, and yet the hits kept coming. So did the bookings. After she got rid of Ted and had me and Ruth running things, the bookings got bigger, the travel got crazier, and her moods got shakier. Ken came along, and Ken helped. Ken’s a good cat, but there was still a void in her life. The void was church. By church, I don’t mean her missing regular Sunday services at New Bethel, but the
spirit
of the church. Her soul was craving that spirit. Her heart was crying for it. Church wasn’t only the appreciation of the saints who had encouraged her every note since she was a little girl. Church was the presence of God’s all-accepting love. Church was home, mommy and daddy, a place where she could completely be herself. Just as God is the source of every good thing, church is the source of every good musical thing in Aretha’s life.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that singing jazz or pop or R-and-B hurt her in any appreciable way. And of course neither
my father nor myself ever did or would discourage her from singing other forms. But at the beginning of 1972, given the whirlwind nature of her life, it was, like the Beatles song says, time to get back to where she once belonged.

“After all is said and done,
Amazing Grace
was a homecoming—a joyous and heartfelt homecoming. You hear it in the excitement of the choir. You hear it in the reaction of the congregation. But mostly you hear it in my sister’s voice. Of course, it helped tremendously that she was reuniting with James Cleveland, one of her main mentors. James was about the most reassuring presence you could have. The only thing possibly more reassuring was the presence of our father, who attended in the company of Clara Ward. When they arrived for the second service on Friday night, the scene was set in complete perfection. The person who mattered most to Aretha was seated in the front pew. And the female singer who had served as her musical mother was seated right next to him. It was a moment when Ree returned to those formative years, those days and nights when she was singing for both her Heavenly Father and earthly father at the same time. The difference, though, was this: Sister was no longer a prodigal child but a full-grown woman who, having captured the heart of the world, had come home to acknowledge and thank Jesus for the gift of her genius.”

“She actually got some criticism from old-school church people,” said Carolyn, “who accused her of putting on some Hollywood event. They said it was exploitation. They didn’t like her including pop tunes like ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone.’ They didn’t like her singing stuff by Carole King and Marvin Gaye. When the showbiz columns reported that Mick Jagger had showed up for one of the services, the traditionalists saw it as proof that the whole thing was a staged event. But I was there and I’m telling you that it was real. It was righteous. We had no idea that Mick Jagger was in the church, and we couldn’t have cared less. It was all about Aretha and James and that smokin’ choir. It was all about digging deep into the roots and renewing the tradition that got her over.”

To watch the raw footage of the
Amazing Grace
film shot by Sydney Pollack is an illumination. Alan Elliot, a former Atlantic producer, showed me a copy in 2010. For years, he had painstakingly labored to save, restore, edit, produce, and release the film. Long before I saw the images, I had memorized the record. To see it, though—to actually witness the performance—was not only thrilling, on every aesthetic and emotional level, but shocking. I hadn’t thought I could ever appreciate the music more. But watching the film caused me to do just that.

First there is the image of Aretha herself. She glows with soft confidence. There is no swagger in her gracious self-assurance, but rather a sweet humility. In the presence of her dad and Clara Ward, that humility is easy to understand. She is there not to outdo them, but to honor them. She is completely comfortable, totally in control of her surroundings and her material. James Cleveland’s strong presence is reassuring.

When her father is asked to speak, the emotions behind his words match the emotions of his daughter’s music.

“This music took me all the way back to the living room at home when she was six and seven years of age,” he says. “I saw you crying and I saw you responding, but I was just about to bust wide open. You talk about being moved—not only because Aretha is my daughter, Aretha is just a
stone
singer.”

When Aretha hears her father’s praise, a sweet and bashful smile breaks over her face.

“Reverend James Cleveland knows about those days. When James came to prepare our choir… he and Aretha used to go in the living room and spend hours in there singing different songs. She’s influenced greatly by James. If you want to know the truth, she has never left the church!”

After her father speaks, Aretha replaces James at the piano, where she plays and sings “God Will Take Care of You.” At one point, seeing his daughter’s brow wet with perspiration, C.L. gets
up, walks over, takes his handkerchief, and gently dries her forehead. It is an exquisite gesture, a touching moment—a father caring for a child.

The high points are many: During the “Precious Memories” duet with Cleveland, teacher and student both cry out
sacred secrets
in voices that chill the blood. Just as riveting is her reading of “Mary, Don’t You Weep.” The quirky 12/8 time signature creates a ferocious groove that sharpens the edge of Aretha’s biblical storytelling. When Mary chastises Jesus for allowing her brother Lazarus to die, Aretha voices her grief in terms of a stammer. She addresses Christ as “my master” followed by “my my my my my my my my my my my sweet Lord.” As Billy Preston once told me, that stutter might be the greatest riff of Aretha’s career. The church explodes. But that’s only the pre-climax. The full weight of the story comes when Christ summons Lazarus from the dead and gives him new life. Jazz singer Dianne Reeves, in describing her experience of first hearing Aretha’s “Mary,” told Aaron Cohen, “It makes you feel like you’re standing there watching Jesus calling Lazarus. The thing that really gets me is that in the background, how the choir is very far in the back, like when Lazarus gets up he may be kind of dizzy. You hear these choir members in the background going ‘woooo, woooo’… The way that she sings it, the way that she tells the story, you’re right there seeing the whole thing go down.”

“The whole record is punctuated by little miracles,” said Carmen McRae. “And that’s coming from me—a person who’s always thought Baptist church singing can be overwrought. In this instance, though, the art approaches perfection. She’s turning traditional gospel to pop and turning pop songs into gospel.”

“It’s an important moment in the history of black gospel,” added Billy Preston, “because it lights up the crossroads. She gives a nod to old time by including those Clara Ward and Caravan songs. But she also anticipates modern gospel. She actually helps invent modern gospel by including Marvin Gaye and allowing a funky R-and-B rhythm section and razor-sharp choir to dress up
the sounds. It’s more than Aretha’s greatest performance. It’s really a radical record.”

The record—which was heavily edited and resequenced back in Atlantic’s New York studio—turned out to be a success on every imaginable level. Not only did critics call it her crowning achievement, but the public came out in droves to buy it. Since its release in June of 1972, it has sold well over two million copies. It remains the biggest-selling album in Aretha’s career as well as the biggest-selling album in the history of black gospel.

“I see it as more than a hit record,” said brother Cecil. “I see it as the sacred moment in the life of black people. Think back. We had lost Martin; we had lost Malcolm; we had lost Bobby Kennedy. We were still fighting an immoral war. We had Tricky Dick in the White House. Turmoil, anger, corruption, confusion. We needed reassurance and recommitment. We needed redirection. So when Aretha helped lead us back to God—the only force for good that stays steady in this loveless world—I’d call it historical.”

“I’m a hard-core, card-carrying atheist,” said Wexler. “I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in art. And though it might sound like hyperbole, my assessment of
Amazing Grace
is that it relates to religious music in much the same way Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel relates to religious art. In terms of scope and depth, little else compares to its greatness.”

W
hile Aretha was praising God in James Cleveland’s church, she was also singing his glory on national television. On the same Friday night of the
Amazing Grace
recording, an episode of the network drama
Room 222,
shot a few weeks earlier, was aired in prime time. Although her speaking part was small, Aretha sang a stirring full-length version of “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” to people in need of rehabilitation.

In the dialogue within the show, a man watching her sing asked, “Is she a minister?”

“No,” answered a woman. “She’s not a minister, but she ministers.”

That same month,
Time
reported Jesse Jackson’s break from Operation Breadbasket to start Operation PUSH in Chicago. The article described Jackson’s split from other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference following Dr. Martin Luther King’s death. Aretha Franklin was mentioned among the “prominent blacks” helping Jackson raise $250,000 for his new organization. Others included Ossie Davis, Jim Brown, and Manhattan borough president Percy Sutton.

Aretha played the Apollo Theater in January, where she received
a standing ovation for her one-hour performance, a benefit concert for families of the victims of the Attica prison riots.

On January 27, Mahalia Jackson died in Chicago. Over fifty thousand admirers passed by her casket at the Greater Salem Baptist Church. Her funeral, held at the Arie Crown Theater at McCormick Place, was attended by six thousand people. Aretha was there to pay tribute. She sang “Precious Lord,” the same hymn Mahalia had sung at the funeral of Dr. King.

“Mahalia represented the end of a glorious era that brought traditional gospel to the white masses,” said Billy Preston. “She was the reigning matriarch of that genre. Mahalia was also a purist. Aside from ‘Come Sunday,’ a religious song she sang with Duke Ellington as part of his
Black, Brown and Beige
suite, she avoided jazz at all costs. Clara Ward sang in Vegas, but not Mahalia. She wouldn’t carry gospel into a nightclub. She was the last of her kind. Some say that with her passing, Aretha assumed her throne, but that’s wrong. Aretha had already been crowned Queen of Soul, a category that included gospel—but much more. Mahalia wouldn’t have accepted the Queen of Soul title because
soul
sounds too street. That doesn’t mean that Mahalia didn’t sing with a blues cry in her voice. God knows there were jazz notes all over her style, but the story had to be religious. Even after
Amazing Grace
went through the roof, Aretha would never go the way of Mahalia. Aretha would never restrict herself to gospel. What’s really interesting about that, though, is that the black gospel community—both singers and fans—are insistent that you are either in one camp or the other. They don’t like their artists switching back and forth. Good examples are Little Richard or Al Green. They both tried to be as popular as gospel stars as they were in the R-and-B field but failed. Aretha’s the one exception. She’s accepted in whatever field she chooses to work. The doors of the church are always open to her. The saints welcome her whenever she chooses to honor them with her presence.”

In February, Aretha expanded her repertoire even further. On a network TV comedy show, she ventured into vocal impressions.

“From the earliest days, she had this knack for throwing her voice and sounding like just about any female singer out there,” said Cecil. “When we were kids, she could do everyone from Ruth Brown to Kay Starr. She was a phenomenal mimic. She always wanted to put it in her act, but I always thought it might be a little cheesy. But Aretha’s gonna do what Aretha’s gonna do. When Ruth booked her on the
Flip Wilson Show,
Aretha brought it up again. We mentioned it to Flip’s producers, who liked the idea. So she did Diana Ross, Sarah Vaughan, Dionne Warwick, and Della Reese. She nailed every single impression, and from then on, it became a regular part of her act. She thought it added to the entertainment value of her show. Many of her fans didn’t like it. They came to hear Aretha, not Aretha imitating Diana Ross. But other fans got a kick out of the accuracy of her impressions. I’d say the reaction was equally divided. But, as in all matters, Ree got the final vote, and the impressions stayed.”

A
Jet
magazine article underlined Ken Cunningham’s influence. He told the reporter, “The one most important change in Aretha’s life is that she is happy and she’s now being related to as a Black woman and a sister.”

On March 24, she celebrated her thirtieth birthday by giving herself a party at New York’s Americana Hotel. Guests included Richard Roundtree, Cannonball Adderley, Miriam Makeba, Nikki Giovanni, Betty Shabazz, and Quincy Jones, whom she had named the producer of her next album.

“Aretha asked me if I had any objections,” said Jerry Wexler. “And I assured her that I had none. I had produced ten albums on Aretha in five years and there was no reason why she shouldn’t venture out in a new direction. I thought Quincy was a good choice. He had done work for Atlantic in the past. He was one of the arrangers of the
Genius of Ray Charles
album. He had a reputation for missing deadlines, but I figured that, working with an artist of Aretha’s caliber, he’d have to be on time. The quality of his musicality was beyond reproach. I also liked the idea of an Aretha/Quincy jazz album.
Soul ’69
had been a successful Aretha jazz
record and it was high time for another. The locale was another plus. Quincy was based in LA. Aretha had cut studio records in Muscle Shoals and New York but hadn’t worked in a West Coast studio. I thought the change would be good.”

“This was the Quincy Jones that was getting his feet wet with soul and R-and-B,” said Cecil. “Ree and I saw Q as a jazz cat. We wanted a jazz album. He said he wanted to use some of the best jazz musicians, like Phil Woods and Joe Farrell.”

“That’s when the delays started,” said Wexler. “The delays drove me crazy. We were used to doing an Aretha Franklin album in a couple of weeks. Get the songs together, get the musicians, the backup girls, book the studio, and bang out ten songs in a few sessions. That’s how Aretha works best. She’s a very assertive recording artist. She likes to jump on the material. Deliberation isn’t her style. Procrastination on the part of the producer does not help.”

“Q had lots on his plate,” Cecil explained. “He was juggling lots of projects—writing for the movies and TV as well as producing the studio. I love the man but never felt that we got his full attention. I’m not saying that Aretha didn’t contribute to the delays. There were more than a couple of times when she canceled West Coast trips. Her fear of flying was building up. When we did arrive in LA for the meetings, Q was always the most hospitable and loving man you can imagine. But his concept was changing. He was talking less about a straight-ahead jazz album and more about a mixed bag—a jazz tune, an R-and-B tune, maybe a show tune. Aretha said she had several originals that she wanted to include. Q liked the idea. Wasn’t long before we were all over the place. Wexler was concerned. He was calling me every day, asking, ‘What the fuck is taking so long?’ ‘Take it easy, Jerry,’ I’d say. ‘The record is developing.’ ‘I don’t want it developing,’ he’d say, ‘I want it
delivered.
’ ”

What was delivered from the sessions that started in the spring and didn’t conclude till late summer was disappointing. That Quincy/Aretha project,
Hey Now Hey
(
The Other Side of the Sky
), was Aretha’s first Atlantic album that did not land in the top twenty-five
on the pop chart. In Quincy’s autobiography,
Q,
he failed to give an account of his time in the studio with Aretha. The record got only a passing mention.

Neither fish nor fowl, it’s an unfocused hodgepodge of unrelated songs. The cover art, conceived by Ken Cunningham, is amateurish and bizarre—a strange sketch of an angelic Aretha, a dope needle, a black matador, and Quincy sleeping in the clouds. Aretha told interviewers that she was baffled by the drawings.

Two of Aretha’s originals—the title track and “So Swell When You’re Well”—are subpar. Her rendition of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s “Somewhere” from
West Side Story
is overwrought and strained. When she sings James Moody’s bebop classic “Moody’s Mood,” her vocalese feels rushed and uncertain. And yet for all its faults,
Hey Now Hey
cannot be ignored. Four of its tracks are fine. And one of those four—“Angel,” written by sister Carolyn—is among the powerful and poignant singles in Aretha’s career. It was the album’s only hit.

Aretha’s simple and sincere spoken introduction to “Angel” has become as much a part of the song as the melody or lyric. It’s the one song she has sung—and continues to sing—at her every concert. She never fails to start with her prologue:

“I got a call the other day,” she says. “It was my sister Carolyn saying, ‘Aretha, come by when you can. I’ve got something that I want to say.’ And when I got there, she said, ‘You know, rather than go through a long-drawn-out thing, I think the melody on the box will help me explain.’ ”

The opening line—“Gotta find me an angel, to fly away with me”—is, in the words of sister Erma, “a prayer with wings. It’s Carolyn’s most beautiful song—and that’s saying a lot because my sister wrote dozens of beautiful songs. But ‘Angel’ took it to a higher level—to the Curtis Mayfield/Marvin Gaye level, where there’s really something divine about her composition. I can’t tell you how proud we were of Carolyn. Daddy, Cecil, myself, and especially Aretha realized that she had finally realized the potential of her God-given gift.”

Aretha’s one successful original is “Sister from Texas.”

“She wrote it for Esther Phillips,” Cecil told me. “When Ree won her Grammy for
Young, Gifted, and Black,
she gave it to Esther, who that same year was nominated in the same category—Best R-and-B Album—for
From a Whisper to a Cry,
a great record that Aretha loved. Esther had fought off a lot of demons at that point in her life and the struggle wasn’t over. Like Aretha, Esther had been a child star. Aretha had deep respect for her and wanted to help the sister in every way she could. It was one of those times when Aretha showed the love and generosity that I knew to be at the core of her character.”

Her exposition of Bobby Womack’s “That’s the Way I Feel About Cha” is a study in overdubbing. A year earlier, Marvin Gaye had layered and harmonized his many voices in
What’s Going On,
and the impact was immediate. In covering Womack’s big hit from his
Communication
album, Aretha surely has Marvin in mind. She shadows herself to chilling effect. The intensity of three or four Arethas coming at you at once—especially out of that fat, kicked-back Bobby Womack pocket—is thrilling.

The final thrill on
Hey Now Hey
is Quincy’s reconstructed and newly expanded treatment of Avery Parrish’s “After Hours,” a classic 1940 instrumental hit for Erskine Hawkins that Aretha had learned as a little girl. When Reverend Franklin woke his prodigal daughter to play for his party guests back in Detroit, “After Hours” was one of his requests.

“It’s essentially a jam,” said Billy Preston, who played the original Avery Parrish part on the track. “I start off just duplicating the record. But then Q wrote this killer big-band chart that kicks in. I mean, it’s like a Basie chart. All Q did was tell Ree, ‘Sing the blues, baby.’ That’s all he needed to say ’cause Sista turns it out. She’s making up the words as she goes along. She’s moaning low. And before long, she’s screaming, she’s soaring, she turns in the best straight-up blues singing I’ve heard since Ray Charles. Funny thing is that at the end of what was supposed to be a pure jazz album, Aretha turns in about the best blues performance anyone’s ever
done since the blues were invented somewhere in the middle of a muddy cotton field in Mississippi.”

In mid-June, before completing
Hey Now Hey,
Aretha gave a triumphant performance at Chicago’s Arie Theater.

“I’ve never seen her better,” said Ruth Bowen. “I was a little worried because she wasn’t exactly happy with the record she was making with Quincy. It was taking forever and the lack of progress put her in a bad mood. You wouldn’t know that, though, by her demeanor onstage.”

In the
Chicago Tribune,
Lynn Van Matre wrote about the concert:

“Even done up in a white satin dress with rhinestones for the first of two concerts Saturday, she wasn’t exactly pretty. But more important, she was beautiful, and even with her 12-piece recording orchestra and three backup singers in saris on stage with her, there was never any doubt who was the center of attention… and why.”

In the same edition of the
Tribune,
there was mention of her scheduled performance at the outdoor “Jail Show of 1972 for more than 3,200 inmates of Cook County Jail.”

“Ken Cunningham has a heart for the downtrodden and less fortunate,” said Cecil. “He was always arranging for Aretha to sing benefits and concerts for those who were ordinarily not privileged to see her. In that respect, Ken was a great influence. His political conscience went along perfectly with Aretha’s and mine. I remember that was the summer that Nixon was running for reelection. My good friend Marvin Gaye put out a highly political single called ‘You’re the Man.’ Like everything Marvin did, it was shot through with biting irony—a jab at the establishment. Aretha and I must have listened to that two dozen times in a row. That’s when she told me that she really wanted to collaborate with Marvin. Wasn’t long after that when I ran into Marvin in Detroit. ‘Any time, bro,’ he said. ‘I’m ready.’ For years we went back and forth,
trying to make the arrangements. We were always running in different directions and it never happened. That still bothers me. I can only imagine what kind of music my sister and Marvin would have made together.”

Ruth Bowen also remembered that year’s hit parade, but for a different reason. “Sammy Davis Jr., one of my favorite people in all the world—I was very close to him and his mother—pulled a big surprise. Given the fact that we were in the soul era, everyone said that Sammy—essentially a Broadway belter—would never have another hit. Trying to be current, Sammy had actually signed with Motown, but they didn’t know what to do with him. Then this movie came out—
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
—that had a song called ‘Candy Man.’ Turned out to be Sammy’s only number-one hit in his career. ‘I’m happy,’ Sammy told me, ‘but I want a hit with the kind of soul song Aretha sings.’ ‘Count your blessings,’ I said, ‘and eat your candy.’ ”