Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin

by David Ritz

  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, a
t 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.”

  No doubt, “Today I Sing the Blues” captured the real Aretha. When she signed with Atlantic later in the decade and recorded the Soul ’69 album, she refashioned it to fit in the “Dr. Feelgood” mode, but the alteration was slight. The original was right to begin with. What wasn’t right, though, was the rest of Aretha’s first record. The material is uneven, the arrangements weak. Only when Aretha settles in on piano and belts blues variations like “Right Now” and “Maybe I’m a Fool” does she take command.

  “Those are the songs,” said Hammond, “that worked the best for me. My original notion was to do an entire record of such songs. Aretha and her dad said they were excited to work with me because I had worked with Count Basie and Billie Holiday. I saw her in that great timeless tradition. But when we got into the planning stage, they started saying how important it was that the record get airplay. They wanted singles—and they wanted a hit. That’s how we wound up doing ‘Sweet Lover,’ an innocuous tune they thought would hit with the teen market. The same thing applied to ‘Love Is the Only Thing.’ The musicians I hired for the session—Ray Bryant, Osie Johnson, and Milton Hinton—were among the most experienced in New York and could adapt to any style. At our studio on Thirtieth Street, they did their best coping with the inferior material. At first, Aretha and her dad thought adding a trombone—the wonderful Tyree Glenn—on certain tracks would sound too old-fashioned, but I finally convinced them otherwise. I also didn’t think that including ‘Over the Rainbow’ was appropriate. But the Franklins were adamant. They said they wanted to reach a wider audience and thought paying tribute to Judy Garland was the way to do it. I capitulated.

  “I suggested ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’ from Gershwin’s masterful Porgy and Bess. George Gershwin deeply understood the blues idiom and, together with his brother Ira’s witty lyrics, wrote sterling vehicles for black voices. I was a bit worried that the story, which questioned the literal truth of the Bible with a wink and a nod, might be problematical. But Reverend Franklin had not the least concern. He told me how much he admired the Gershwins. He also said that, when it came to scriptural analysis, he opposed literalism. I was most impressed with the reverend’s erudition and liberal theology.

  “We had disagreements, though, when it came to his strong suggestion that we include a gospel song. I’m a passionate fan of gospel. I brought Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Golden Gate Quartet to Carnegie Hall back in 1938. There’s no music for which I have greater appreciation. At the same time, I didn’t feel that sticking in a single gospel number would help the cohesiveness of this first record. Reverend Franklin disagreed. We discussed it at length and he and Aretha came up with what they considered a compromise—a song called ‘Are You Sure’ from the Broadway musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown. The song had somewhat of a spiritual message. Reverend Franklin saw it as white-friendly. I thought it was anemic. I wanted something much closer to what Aretha had been singing in church, but, again, I was outvoted.

  “When we were through recording and listened to the playbacks in the studio, Aretha and her father could not have been more pleased. Their goal was to cover all the bases. My goal was to capture the essence of this remarkable young talent. With the exception of a few songs, I’m afraid I didn’t do that. Yet the reviews were generally excellent, and ‘Today I Sing the Blues’ and ‘Won’t Be Long’ reached the top ten of the rhythm-and-blues Billboard chart. They didn’t enjoy tremendous sales, but they did garner airplay. In that regard, the record, for all my reservations, was seen as a semi-success.”

  The recording sessions began in August of 1960 and continued, off and on, for six months. Hammond explained that was due to the dispute over material.

  “The company wanted to release two singles before the album was complete,” he said. “ ‘Love Is the Only Thing’ came out and didn’t perform. Then we released ‘Today I Sing the Blues.’ ”

  Billboard gave each of the singles three stars. The reviewer called the first “a smartly styled blues by the gal in dual track. Fine gospel-type piano is heard in the backing. She can catch some spins with jazz-oriented effort.” Of the second, Billboard wrote, “A slow rhythm blues chant with gal backed in okay style by guitar, piano and
bass. The artist has talent and should be watched.”

  For the third and fourth singles, “Won’t Be Long” and “Right Now,” released in time for Christmas 1960, Billboard was equally generous: “Young blues thrush Aretha Franklin comes through in solid style on her second outing for the label. She handles the swinging ‘Won’t Be Long’ with a sure vocal touch and does a fine job on the flip as well. Strong wax.”

  According to Dunstan Prial, Hammond’s biographer, the producer wrote Aretha’s manager that “Won’t Be Long” had sold forty thousand copies and was on its way to becoming a major hit. But that prediction didn’t prove true. It peaked at number seven on the R&B charts and did not cross over into pop territory. At best, it was a minor hit.

  “It languished because Aretha did not show up for several interviews and press events,” Hammond told me. “She refused to promote it properly. I don’t know what her problems were, but she had a habit of missing important dates. I suspect she withdrew into a kind of depressive state. I think she had real challenges in the area of mood management.”

  Before the album was released, in February of 1961, Jo King had already booked Aretha into the Village Vanguard, perhaps the most hallowed of all New York jazz clubs.

  Aretha has told interviewers about her initial opportunity to play the Apollo. She said she chose the Vanguard instead because of the jazz venue’s enormous prestige.

  Hammond had a different memory. He told me that Aretha simply didn’t show up for her appearance at the Apollo. She also missed several studio and club dates, all without explanation.

  “Sometimes she’d say she had a sore throat,” said Hammond, “but most of the time she offered no excuses.”

  Dunstan Prial quoted from a letter that Hammond sent to Aretha after she had missed the date at the Apollo as well as an engagement at New York’s Village Gate: “If you don’t straighten up soon you will be a legend in the business and not one of the nice ones.”