Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (8 page)

Another quality was artistic curiosity.

“During the late fifties when everyone was R-and-B crazy, I took another route,” Cecil further explained. “While Erma and Ree went running off to the Warfield Theater to see Little Willie John, I kicked back and listened to Thelonious Monk. Monk was my man. I was deep into modern jazz.

“My pal Pete Moore, who’d later join the Miracles with Smokey Robinson, showed me how to process hair. He and I ran a little barbershop out of the first-floor bathroom of our house. Some people complained that a preacher shouldn’t have a son doing up ’dos in his house, but Daddy thought I showed initiative and encouraged me. In addition to our serious hairstyling chops, what
made our shop different was the music. We played the coolest jazz out there—Charlie Mingus, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Betty Carter. We’d sculpt those super-bad finger waves to the sound of Sonny Stitt.

“Aretha liked to hang out around our ‘shop’—not only because she was crazy, but because of the music. She also spent a lot of time in my room—I had a separate apartment-like setup in the mansion—where she’d sit in front of the hi-fi for hours on end. That’s where she first heard Sarah Vaughan, Smokey’s favorite. But she didn’t stop with Sarah. She studied Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae, Anita O’Day, June Christy, Dakota Staton—anyone I had on the box. She got to a point where she could imitate these singers, lick for lick. Years later, she made vocal imitations part of her act. She’d do Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, and Mavis Staples. But those were her contemporaries. It was in my bedroom where she met her jazz masters, on my Magnavox stereo. It wasn’t a conscious thing with Aretha. I don’t think she listened to harmonically complex jazz in order to enhance her style. Jazz did enhance her style—not out of design, but because she absorbed everything she heard. The same was true for blues and gospel. In her mind and heart, they all mixed and mingled together. You can’t separate them out. Call Aretha a great blues singer and you’re telling the truth. Call her a great gospel singer and no one will argue. Call her a great jazz singer and the greatest jazz artists will agree. Bottom line—she’s all three at once. And in the language of the jazzman, that’s what’s called a motherfucker.”

In 1959, C. L. Franklin thought his daughter was ready.

Aretha often spoke about being nervous when she performed anywhere but church. She considered believers the best audiences. She liked saying that they weren’t critics but worshippers. She saw nightclubs as places populated by cynics who came to see you fail, not succeed. She viewed critics as people who looked for mistakes. She realized that she required support, and if she was going to move
into show business, she wanted not only her father by her side but her brother as well.

“I was ready,” Cecil told me, “but Daddy had other ideas. Just as he had insisted that Erma go to Clark College in Atlanta, he wanted me at Morehouse in that same city. I told him I didn’t want to go to college. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing more important than education. You have no choice. What’s more, it’s a black college, where you’ll be able to learn about the history of your own people. Martin Luther King is a Morehouse man. And you’re going to be one as well.’ I still didn’t want to go, so I put up all sorts of objections. But Daddy showed me the plane ticket he bought me and the receipt for tuition—all paid. ‘When you get there,’ he said, ‘and you decide you don’t want to stay, fine. You’re on your own. Just don’t come back here.’ I went, and I stayed, and it turned out fine. Changed my life for the better. But I still wanted to be with Ree and watch her move into the big time.”

At the conclusion of the fifties, with Aretha about to turn eighteen, she had been a professional for some five years. Her father paid her a modest salary, and her gospel work was recorded and distributed nationally. As a single mother, she retained custody of her two sons. She was not romantically attached, a situation that would soon change.

For all practical purposes, her father was her manager. He would select those advisers he felt were needed to educate both himself and his daughter about the wider world of popular entertainment.

“Daddy knew dozens of famous singers and musicians,” said Carolyn, “but he didn’t know the music business. He knew the church business. But because he was always a man who knew what he didn’t know—that was a big part of his intelligence—he was ready to rely on others. As Ree prepared to try this new thing, there were a lot of uncertainties out there. One thing, though, was for sure: Daddy had stars in his eyes, and so did Aretha. The plan was to make her a star—and make it happen quickly.”

That it didn’t happen quickly enough would be the source of dramatic frustration for years to come.

I
n 1960, the year Aretha sought her first secular recording contract, Cecil Franklin’s best friend, Smokey Robinson, released the newly formed Motown Records’ first million-selling single, “Shop Around.” Because Berry Gordy was actively recruiting Detroit’s local musical talent, it made perfect sense that he’d want Aretha.

“He did,” said Cecil. “I was studying at Morehouse at the time, but Smokey and I never lost touch. Nothing would have been easier than getting Ree signed to Motown. And of course Daddy was close to Anna Gordy, Berry’s sister, who knew all about Aretha. It made sense, but not to Daddy. He wanted Ree on Columbia, the label that recorded Mahalia Jackson, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, Percy Faith, and Doris Day. Daddy said that Columbia was the biggest and best record company in the world. Leonard Bernstein recorded for Columbia.

“Berry Gordy was cool, Berry Gordy had written some good songs, Berry Gordy had signed Smokey, and Smokey and his Miracles were great, but you couldn’t begin to compare Berry to Columbia. Berry was Detroit, and Daddy was convinced that Aretha’s career couldn’t be launched from Detroit. Look at Della Reese. Della grew up in Detroit, but her career didn’t take off until
she left town with the Erskine Hawkins big band. So it came down to Aretha moving to either Los Angeles or New York. California was too far away. Aretha wanted to be closer to home. Given her insecurities, she also wanted protection. Daddy would handpick her chaperones and her managers. Daddy was the general in charge of the whole operation.”

The general had to hire a sergeant—an agent/manager. In Aretha’s book, the only time she mentioned her father’s violence concerned this process. She didn’t like the man he had picked to manage her. When she refused to go along with C.L.’s plan, he slapped her across the face. But she remained adamant and got her way.

This was a critical omen of things to come. The first fissure between father and daughter would grow in the next few years. The issue would continue to be management, especially with a major break not far off, causing a seismic change in Aretha’s relationship to men, power, and control. Who would be in charge of Aretha and her career?

For the time being, she and her father compromised on a female manager, Jo King, who worked out of New York and had contacts with the major labels. It was during this trip to New York in early 1960 that C.L. took Aretha to meet the great Phil Moore.

When Aretha and her dad walked into Moore’s small For Singers Only studio in Manhattan in 1960, Moore was a forty-two-year-old piano player/arranger/coach whose vast experience spanned Hollywood film scores, cabarets, and jazz clubs. He had written arrangements for Tommy Dorsey and Harry James. He had composed dozens of movie soundtracks for MGM and Paramount. He had engineered Dorothy Dandridge’s enormous crossover success and coached Lena Horne.

“When Reverend Franklin came to see me,” Moore told me, “the singers he was most interested in were Dorothy and Lena. That’s the kind of future he saw for his daughter. He wanted to break her in New York and then have me move her out to Hollywood and get her in the movies. I sat down at the piano and asked
her what she wanted to sing. She said ‘Navajo Trail.’ That surprised me, but I played it anyway. What surprised me even more was the gospel flavor she gave the song. I suggested several standards, and she knew them all. She stuck to the melody, her pitch was perfect, but she transformed every mood—even a tune like ‘Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive’—to something very serious. I decided immediately that this was a serious singer. Her father kept discussing stage presentation. He wanted to know how I might help her find the kind of audience Lena Horne had found. How could I refine her style?

“I said, ‘Reverend Franklin, my years in this business have not made me shy about speaking my mind. Singers come to me who, unfortunately, will never realize professional success. I consider it my duty to tell them just that. And I do. Other singers come to me with potential but require vigorous training. They must work diligently at their craft for years. I have several such students. Your daughter, however, fits into neither of these categories. She does not require my services. Her style has already been developed. Her style is in place. It is a unique style that, in my professional opinion, requires no alteration. It simply requires the right material. Her stage presentation is not of immediate concern. All that will come later. The immediate concern is the material that will suit her best. And the reason that concern will not be easily addressed is because I can’t imagine any material that will not suit her.’

“Reverend Franklin took in everything I said. He had arrived prepared to pay me a considerable fee to help his daughter, and yet I was telling him that, in good conscience, I could not accept his money. That won his respect. Because I was being absolutely candid with him, he wanted to know whether his notion of placing her with Columbia Records was a good idea. I thought it was. I also thought that John Hammond, whom I had known through the years, would be an ideal producer. Hammond worked at Columbia. I considered him a great man. He had recorded Benny Carter, Fletcher Henderson, and Benny Goodman. He was the first one to bring Billie Holiday into a recording studio. He had produced
Count Basie. He was the most serious music man I knew. I felt strongly that he would immediately understand Aretha’s talent. He would bring out her musicality and protect her artistic integrity. Additionally, he was a genuine aristocrat, the son of a Vanderbilt, and his position at Columbia would guarantee that Aretha would receive all the proper promotional effort required. I also suggested that Reverend Franklin contact Major Holley, a premier bass player, to produce a demo for Mr. Hammond to hear. Major hails from Detroit. He and the reverend had met on several occasions and held one another in the highest esteem. With such stellar participants in place, I was convinced that her career would blossom.”

Like Phil Moore, Major Holley was a seasoned pro, a brilliant jazz artist who had backed a remarkable number of jazz greats, from Coleman Hawkins to Charlie Parker. When we spoke, he had a distinct memory of performing in the Franklin living room with Oscar Peterson. He also recalled C.L. waking his daughter to have her come downstairs and do her rendition of “Canadian Sunset.”

“She didn’t sing that night,” said Major, “and she didn’t stay long. She was terribly shy but she did play beautifully. Later, friends who had heard her sing at a revival meeting raved about her voice. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that her father, a minister, wanted me to produce jazz demos for her. After all, some musicians in Detroit called him the Jazz Preacher. He wasn’t exactly sure which songs he wanted her to sing and was open to my suggestions. I opted for familiar tunes. I can’t recall how many songs we did, but it was very straight-ahead. I put together a trio that I knew would give her rock-solid accompaniment. She came one afternoon around one, we rehearsed for an hour, and by three we had what we wanted on tape. She was a natural. The song she liked best, I recall, was ‘Today I Sing the Blues.’ We were all struck by how an eighteen-year-old girl sang that blues ballad with the authority of a grown woman.

“My hope was that, if she did attract a record contract, I’d be called to the studio to play on her first album. But I wasn’t. When I
listened to that album, though, I was struck by the fact that the song that made the greatest impact was the same ‘Today I Sing the Blues.’ I know I’m prejudiced, but I felt that the raw demo was a lot stronger than the version they released. I told Reverend Franklin the same thing as Phil Moore—the less you produce her, the better she’ll be. Lesser artists require greater production. The greatest require very little.”

John Hammond, who heard the demo, immediately signed her to Columbia, and he produced the first record.

I first spoke with John Hammond in the early eighties when he was in the process of bringing Stevie Ray Vaughan to Columbia. This was to be Hammond’s last hurrah, his final significant signing. Jerry Wexler had introduced me. Wexler looked up to Hammond, who was seven years his senior, and Jerry had enormous respect for the man’s commitment to not only quality jazz but civil rights. At the same time, their friendly rivalry was evident. Hammond was the first to sign Aretha, but his recordings with her were not commercial successes. Out of Hammond’s presence, Wexler told me, “John has unfaltering taste for talent but is not good in the studio. He seeks to document music, but a producer must do more than that. A producer must sculpt a sound. John doesn’t know how to do that.”

For his part, Hammond was defensive about his years with Aretha. He claimed that he never got to produce her the way he had envisioned.

“Those first sessions,” he told me, “were put together in haste. It was Curtis Lewis, writer of ‘Today I Sing the Blues,’ who brought me the demo of that song sung by Aretha. I was knocked out. I wanted to sign her immediately. Funny, but years later, Helen Humes, a great singer who I brought to Count Basie, reminded me that I had recorded the song with her on Mercury in 1947. Helen claimed that she had cowritten it with Curtis, who never put his name on it. She never received any royalties.

“My vision for Aretha had nothing to do with rhythm and blues. It was a market that neither I nor, for that matter, Columbia
Records cared to cultivate. I saw her as a jazz/blues artist. For the first Aretha sessions, I immediately hired the best jazz musicians in town, but I wanted more time to work up the arrangements. Reverend Franklin was in a great hurry to get something out there. He felt as though they had waited a very long time for this moment. They were looking to book her in jazz clubs and needed product. I didn’t see the rush. Aretha had just turned eighteen. At the same time, I learned that Sam Cooke had told RCA to pursue Aretha. If I didn’t have a signed contract and assure her father that we would have a record out that very year—1960—I feared we’d lose her.”

Columbia didn’t lose her. Contracts were signed, and in May the label placed an ad in
Ebony
, the national black magazine, for both Aretha’s debut album and a new record by Oscar Brown Jr.,
Sin and Soul
. The media selection indicates that the record company was aiming primarily for the African American market.

In her book, Aretha offers at least two different versions of the person she was when she first stepped into a professional recording studio. One was a young ingénue who had moved from Detroit to New York and required chaperones. She mentioned two—Sue Dodds Banks, a friend of C.L.’s who drove for a funeral home in Detroit, and Elizabeth Thornton, former secretary to Mahalia Jackson. She spoke of living at the YMCA, at the Bryant Hotel in midtown, at the Chelsea Hotel—where she was evicted because C.L. forgot to pay the weekly rent—and at a small hotel in Greenwich Village. In describing her sequestered New York life where her every move was supervised by an older woman, she hardly sounded like a mother of two boys.

Aretha’s other self-portrait was of a woman on the hunt for men. Both she and Erma were interested in the Flamingos. They had met them through Harvey Fuqua, the doo-wop master who mentored Marvin Gaye and brought him to Motown. Sisterly rivalry ensued, and Aretha wound up dating Flamingo Nate Nelson.
She also went out with Paul Owens, a singer for the Swan Silvertones, one of the great gospel groups. She explained that the affair lasted until she caught him with another woman.

“I still had the Moonglows,” said Harvey Fuqua, “when I met Aretha. Like most of the teenage girls, she was doo-wop crazy because doo-wop was such a romantic music. It was all about worshipping women and promising them eternal love. The harmonies were geared to get the ladies.

“Aretha was an unusual young girl because when you first met her, you’d think she was the shyest young creature ever invented. She’d be in a room with other people for hours and not say a word. The cat always had her tongue. But when the room emptied, she sure wasn’t shy about coming up to me and asking for an introduction to this guy or that guy. Once she was introduced, she pursued him—and I mean pursued him hard. The girl was relentless.”

Of all the Franklin children, Carolyn, the baby, had perhaps the most objective view of what was happening in 1960.

“I was sixteen and still in high school,” she said. “I was the last child left at home. Aretha was in New York. She’d come home often to visit her babies, but it was Big Mama who was raising her boys. There was never any doubt—not for a second—that having two babies would interfere with Aretha’s career. Erma was also pursuing her career. She was on the road with Lloyd Price. Cecil was off at college. So Daddy decided that it would be better for me to move in with another family in our neighborhood. That decision crushed me. I argued and cried but couldn’t change his mind. I understand now that, after raising four children as a single father, he wanted the run of his household. I also suspected he wanted more freedom to bring in his lady friends without his prying kids around. Whatever he wanted, though, I resented being thrown out. For years I was angry at my siblings for not coming to my defense and convincing our father to let me stay. I knew their arguments wouldn’t make any difference—once our father made up his mind, that was it—but I felt deserted by everyone. I was the odd duck. Cecil was the brilliant student. Erma and Aretha were
the brilliant singers. They were also chasing after boys when I was discovering that my romantic preference went in an entirely different direction. In a family of stars—and in the case of Aretha, a superstar—it took me a long time to find my own identity and voice. Looking back, I see that we were all searching. Even Aretha wouldn’t find her true voice for years to come.”

Jerry Wexler agreed with Carolyn’s assessment—Aretha’s six years at Columbia were essentially an attempt to discover her real voice.

“In those early recordings,” said Wexler, “she sounds uncertain and unharnessed. She’s trying to figure out who she is, and I don’t think John was really helping her.”

Hammond had another version of the eighteen-year-old Aretha. “She needed little direction. Her style was intact. Anyone with decent ears could hear that she was a gospel-trained singer extremely comfortable with jazz and blues. I hired Ray Bryant, a jazz-blues pianist rooted in gospel. He understood Aretha and she adored his playing. In fact, the first thing we recorded—‘Today I Sing the Blues’—became a classic and remained in her repertoire even when she changed labels. If you listen to it, you aren’t hearing a singer in search of a style. She’s found it.”