Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (28 page)

Jet
reported that in August, back in New York after her recording sessions with Quincy Jones, Aretha was into a vigorous cycling routine in Central Park. She told the magazine that she had embraced a new diet and exercise regimen that required her to drink lots of water mixed with vinegar and honey.

A watershed moment arrived in September with the release of Aretha’s version of “Wholy Holy,” the first single from
Amazing Grace.
When the record failed to climb the charts, doubts began to set in. Would the project prove to be a commercial failure?

“After Aretha’s huge success in the R-and-B and pop market,” said Wexler, “[Atlantic] thought promoting a gospel album would disappoint her secular fans. There was also a feeling that once you leave the field of gospel music—as Sam Cooke had—there’s no going back. So when ‘Wholy Holy’ failed to chart in any meaningful way, the naysayers had a field day. But not for long. Fans didn’t look to
Amazing Grace
for singles. As it turned out, they embraced it in its entirety, as an organic and whole listening experience. In
less than six weeks, it sold more than a million copies. That’s unheard-of for a gospel or R-and-B album—especially one without a hit single. This record was on its way to making history. The reason had to do with nothing but quality. When quality is this fantastic, a record sells, no matter what genre. Take Miles Davis’s
Kind of Blue
. No one would ever believe a jazz album would sell in the multimillions. But that particular jazz album is simply so good—the compositions, the playing of Miles, Coltrane, and Cannonball, the new modal sound—that it outstripped anything before or since. What
Kind of Blue
is to jazz,
Amazing Grace
is to gospel. It set a new standard.”

This was the same moment—the summer of 1972—when Wexler was hearing the final masters from
Hey Now Hey
.

“Naturally, I loved ‘Angel,’ ” Wexler said. “Everyone loved ‘Angel,’ and everyone knew ‘Angel’ was a hit. Carolyn saved Aretha’s ass on that record. If it weren’t for ‘Angel,’ the album would have been a total wash. Even with ‘Angel,’ the album was still seen as a flop. It slowed down Aretha’s momentum. Careers have trajectories, and, ever since joining Atlantic, Aretha’s was up, up, up. Quincy Jones has won his fabled place in the history of the music. His big band was wonderful. His small band arrangements for Dinah Washington were great. As a pop guy, he did Lesley Gore’s ‘It’s My Party,’ and you don’t need for me to tell you about the incredible work he did with Michael Jackson. When it came to Aretha, though, he didn’t serve her well. Maybe it was her fault. Maybe she was back on booze. Maybe she knocked him off his jazz course. I don’t know. All I do know, though, is that the issuance of that album represents the end of her golden age on Atlantic.”

Wexler was right. Aretha never recaptured the mojo or momentum of her first remarkable series of albums at Atlantic. Hammond and his colleagues had eventually run out of fertile ideas for the artist, and Wexler and his colleagues were on the verge of doing the same.

A
retha and Ken Cunningham were always hatching grand plans,” said Ruth Bowen. “He convinced her that he could direct a film that she could star in. If Barbra Streisand could do it, so could Aretha. Aretha had a thing about Barbra Streisand. Because they’d started out together on Columbia, she always saw her as competition. Ree saw all female singers as competition. Because Barbra had a big soaring voice, she was seen as super-competition. Then, when Barbra busted out with
Funny Girl
and won an Academy Award, Aretha saw herself doing the same. Next comes Diana Ross. When Berry Gordy had Diana play Billie Holiday in
Lady Sings the Blues,
Aretha had the same reaction—why not me? ‘Well, honey,’ I said, ‘because you don’t have Berry Gordy. Diana does.’ Aretha saw herself as being outdone by women who didn’t have any more talent than her. If they could get a movie, she could too. Nothing wrong with that attitude. In show business, a competitive spirit is good. It makes for motivation, and—for someone who didn’t always relish working—Aretha could use all the motivation she could get. But Ken wasn’t always realistic about what it meant to get a movie made. He just didn’t have the financial muscle. He was her man, though, and even though I believe in
talking straight with my clients, early on I learned that straight talk never beats pillow talk. Pillow talk wins every time.”

The October 12, 1972, issue of
Jet
mentioned that Cunningham and Franklin were scouting locations in Spain “for a film that he will direct and which she will star in.” The movie never happened. The magazine later reported that Aretha was “taking the first half of the year off from concert dates to help friend and confidant Ken Cunningham put together a movie on Black women.”

While the film projects were never realized, Aretha kept up her public appearances and joined Isaac Hayes, Gladys Knight, the Jackson Five, and Donny Hathaway in Chicago at the PUSH Expo ’72 headed by Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Her personal appearance was the subject of a
Jet
article addressing her “mini meals” diet plan. She said she had lost twenty-five pounds and was close to meeting her goal—135 pounds. She also said, “Well, I’m not going to get that small. I’m going to leave enough there for somebody to grab hold to.” Accompanying the article was a photo of Franklin in a bikini in Nassau.

The magazine also noted that Cecil was shopping for a new Aretha Franklin record deal. With her Atlantic contract up on March 31, he was reportedly talking to ABC-Dunhill, Columbia, and Warner Brothers. Her price tag was $5 million.

“I had some doubts about our bargaining position,” Cecil told me. “Of course, Ree had this incredible run of hits. But the truth is that her only platinum-plus album was
Amazing Grace
. She had a great string of singles that somehow hadn’t turned into blockbuster LP sales. And then, on the heels of
Hey Now Hey
, which wasn’t looking all that good, I felt we were a little vulnerable. On the other hand, Ruth and Aretha felt we were in a strong position.”

“Atlantic said they’d give her three million,” said Ruth. “I said that was nothing. She needed twice that. Aretha was behind me but Cecil was a little cautious. I told Cecil to start talking to other labels. That would get Ahmet and Wexler good and nervous. In the early sixties, they had lost Ray Charles to ABC Paramount. That’s when
Ray went on to his big country hits. His leaving cost Atlantic a fortune. I didn’t see those boys making the same mistake twice.”

“I didn’t like how Cecil began making the rounds,” said Wexler. “I didn’t appreciate that. Of course Aretha was a free agent and entitled to see what was out there. But after all was said and done, Atlantic was where she had rediscovered herself. Her tremendous talent notwithstanding, our input was critical to her fabulous success. She didn’t reinvent herself in a vacuum. That reinvention happened in the specific culture of Atlantic Records. Surely we deserved special consideration.”

“Aretha’s first choice was to stay at Atlantic,” said Cecil. “She felt that she owed them both gratitude and loyalty. But business is business. In this case, I followed Ruth’s lead. I worked hard to make Wexler worry.”

“The guy who worried me most was Clive Davis,” said Wexler. “He was running Columbia. Now, Clive is shrewd. He’s the guy who took Columbia from a classical-and-Broadway-musical-cast-recording-driven label—they’d made a fortune on
My Fair Lady
—to the era of rock and roll. Clive had gone to the Monterey Pop Festival and heard the future in Janis Joplin. He saw the money in rock and roll. In the early seventies, he also saw the money in rhythm and blues. That’s when he went after a bigger share of the black music market. He signed Earth, Wind, and Fire and also cut a distribution deal with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff at Philly International, who were terrific writers and producers. Clive saw that Philly International—red hot with the O’Jays and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes—was positioned to be the new Motown. I have no doubt that Gamble and Huff had the chops to produce Aretha, but there was no way I was going to be outbid.”

“When Wexler put four million on the table,” said Cecil, “my inclination was to take it. After all, Aretha had originally signed with the label for twenty-five thousand. Sure, she was a big earner, and sure, she had decades of more hits in her, but Atlantic had sweetened their original offer by a million. As usual, I asked Ruth Bowen’s advice.”

“I told Cecil and Aretha both, ‘Stick to your guns,’ ” said Ruth. “ ‘Atlantic is no longer an independent label. Atlantic is owned by Warner, a major corporation with deep pockets. You’re into a new era. Demand the six million.’ ”

Aretha got the six million.

“Ahmet and I felt like we had no choice,” said Wexler. “We were haunted by the memory of losing Ray Charles and weren’t about to let that happen again. We convinced the brass at Warner to do the deal. Champagne all around. Aretha took the money, bought a glamorous town house on the Upper East Side on Eighty-Eighth Street between Fifth and Madison and hired a decorator and went to town.”

“The place was beautiful,” said sister-in-law Earline. “Aretha was proud of her home and entertained often—mainly her family. She was generous in having me and Cecil and her sisters stay over whenever we wanted. It was a good period. She seemed stable, but stability with Aretha is an illusion. Her emotions—her big highs and her deep lows—don’t let her stay stable. If the stability lasts for a few months, she’s lucky. After that—watch out!”

On January 16, 1973, her stability was shaken by the death of Clara Ward. C. L. Franklin was by Clara’s side. Both he and Aretha performed at her funeral in Philadelphia.

“It was a great loss for our family,” said Cecil. “My father lost perhaps his closest friend. And Aretha lost another mother figure—the singer whose style, in music and fashion, influenced her the most.”

After her sister’s death, Willa Ward found a notebook in which Clara had recorded her impressions of key figures in her life. “My baby Aretha,” wrote Clara. “She doesn’t know how good she is. Doubts self.”

In February, Aretha was in California to perform on the Quincy Jones network television special
We Love You Madly,
a tribute to Duke Ellington. Aretha was especially thrilled to be appearing
along with Duke, Count Basie, Ray Charles, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett, Joe Williams, Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan, and Peggy Lee. Among her seniors, she more than held her own. She was part of the show’s youth contingent, which also included Roberta Flack and the band Chicago.

“She had no objection to Sarah and Peggy,” said Ruth Bowen, “but she didn’t like Roberta Flack being on the show. She felt that one so-called soul singer was enough. Ever since Roberta had joined Atlantic, Aretha didn’t like the attention they were giving her. I had to reassure her that Roberta was a much different kind of artist and that she in no way stole Aretha’s thunder. The issue came up over and over again and finally I gave up trying to calm her down. I let Atlantic deal with it.”

“Aretha knew that I was Roberta’s producer,” said Joel Dorn. “Because of that, every time I ran into her at the studio, she looked at me with daggers in her eyes. I was always extra polite, but I never got past her cold-blooded stare. I’ve dealt with chilly women before, but she was absolute ice. You’d think I killed her dog.”

In March 1973, she returned to the studio to cut
Let Me in Your Life.
The hope was that, back with the Wexler crew, she could reverse the downward sales slide that had started with
Hey Now Hey.
The hope was not realized.

Bill Withers’s title song is a routine cover. Other covers are more convincing: Ashford and Simpson’s “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” Bobby Womack’s “I’m in Love,” Leon Russell’s “A Song for You” (with Richard Tee on keys), plus a well-wrought dramatization of “The Masquerade Is Over.” But there is also tedious filler—“Oh Baby” and “If You Don’t Think So,” two inferior Aretha originals. The feeling is of uninspired obligation. The only showstopper chart topper is “Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I Got to Do),” by Stevie Wonder, Clarence Paul, and Morris Broadnax—the single that went number one on the R&B charts, crossed over to number three on pop, and became a permanent part of Aretha’s repertoire.

In his liner notes to the album’s reissue, soul scholar David
Nathan pointed out that for the first time during a recording session Aretha had let a journalist watch the proceedings. Loraine Alterman from London’s
Melody Maker
quoted Wexler about why these sessions were so different from her earlier work on Atlantic.

“These are the first arranged sessions we’ve done with her,” he tells the reporter. “Everything we’ve done with her has always been woodshedded in the studio with just the rhythm section there.”

In retrospect, the decision appears to be a mistake. Spontaneity is missing.

The album cover reveals a slimmed-down mink-covered Aretha, her Afro a bit softened and highlighted with a hue of red.

“After the six mill we paid for her new contract,” said Wexler, “the album didn’t perform. Stevie’s song wasn’t enough to save it. On the heels of
Hey Now Hey,
another underperformer, I knew that the Franklin franchise was in trouble. We needed something new. I don’t say this to disparage Aretha because, in all ways, she was a great contributor to her own productions. And when we agreed to list her as a coproducer, her attitude changed. She was less accepting of our ideas and far more emboldened to initiate her own. I had to fight with her to let Donny Hathaway play on these sides. She thought it would be over-soul. She also wasn’t thrilled about having Deodato play on ‘Let Me in Your Life.’ She thought it would be under-soul. We were starting to have our issues. Earlier, she’d basically go along with my program. Now she had a program of her own. Well, in the case of Quincy, that program didn’t work. This was another instance where I felt her concept was scattered and emotionally disconnected.”

An emotional disconnection was also evident in Aretha’s personal life.

“It wasn’t long after she moved into the town house that she started having what she described as nightmares,” said Erma. “She started calling me back in Detroit nearly every day with stories of
these terrible dreams. She said they were foreboding. Her voice sounded shaky—which is not at all typical of my sister. She asked whether I could come stay with her in New York, but my job wouldn’t allow it. Carolyn was able to get away, though, and Carolyn wound up staying with her for a while.”

“She was really off-kilter,” said Carolyn. “I’m not sure what was causing the distress—maybe all the travel with Ken, maybe the pressure of the gigs, maybe the tension over her negotiations with Atlantic; I’m not sure. But it became increasingly difficult for her to get out of bed. She did an enormous amount of crying and ultimately we had no choice but to get her to a hospital.”

From
Jet
, April 12, 1973: “Aretha Buries Rumors About ‘Going Crazy’: It was no small wonder that many of [Franklin’s] followers registered dismay over erroneous reports coming out of New York that Miss Franklin was ‘hospitalized for a nervous breakdown.’ So moved was the soul queen by the concern exhibited by her admirers that she called the first press conference of her career to explain that her three-day hospitalization at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York was caused by acute physical exhaustion, a medical fact attested to by her personal physician, Dr. Aaron O. Wells.” In the same issue of
Jet
, there was an additional item: A “hot rumor that Aretha Franklin has a semi-nude scene in a soon to be released movie. The movie, still untitled, was filmed last fall while the Soul Queen was vacationing in the Bahamas.”

“Aretha used
Jet
for decades to clean up and clear up her image,” said Ruth Bowen. “The truth is that she had suffered something of a breakdown but was adamant that the public see her as healthy. I tried to tell her that there is no shame in having mental-health challenges. Most of us have mental-health challenges in one form or another. But she couldn’t tolerate letting me know that. ‘Who
doesn’t
know that you have the blues, Aretha?’ I’d ask. ‘For God’s sakes, you’re a blues singer. You’re supposed to have the blues.’ Didn’t matter what I said. My job was to keep what she considered ‘dirt’ out of the press and to drop in items—like the one about her appearing semi-nude in a film—into the magazines. I invented
half of those, but if it made her happy, so be it. In turn, she made me happy by helping me put together a testimonial dinner. By then she had completed her hospital stay and was regaining her emotional balance.”

That same winter, Aretha—together with Sammy Davis Jr. and Ray Charles—sponsored a testimonial dinner for Ruth Bowen at the New York Hilton, the proceeds going to the foundation for research and education in sickle cell disease and to the Miss Black America scholarship fund.

“It was a beautiful evening,” Ruth remembered. “Aretha was fully recovered and at her best. She could not have been more gracious. Before singing like an angel, she praised me to the sky, like a grateful daughter acknowledging the love of a mother. The ballroom was packed with every star in the galaxy of show business. I told them that I’ve been blessed to have served two queens in my life—first Dinah and now Aretha. Tears were flowing so strong until I made a mess of my makeup.”