Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin

by David Ritz

  The album titled Lady Soul, recorded in ’67 and released in early ’68, is notable for four smashes—“Chain of Fools,” “A Natural Woman,” “Since You’ve Been Gone,” and “Ain’t No Way.”

  Before the final sessions began in December 1967, Aretha rode in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

  A week later, Jet ran a picture of Aretha “taking a call from a fan” while the “injury-prone” star was attended by a nurse in Detroit’s Daly Hospital. The result of an “eye injury suffered in a fall” was a series of canceled dates.

  “She showed up at our sessions looking like she had literally taken a beating,” said Wexler. “But I didn’t ask any questions. I gave her a big hug and told her we were overjoyed to see her. Look, when Aretha showed up, whether two hours or two weeks later, it didn’t matter. We knew that she was ready to do some serious singing.

  “Besides, whatever agony she was going through, there was another downer that none of us could ignore. Only a few days before Aretha showed up in New York, Otis Redding, along with members of the Bar-Kays, had been killed in a plane wreck in Wisconsin. That happened on December tenth, 1967, when my wife, Shirley, and I were returning from a music-business conference where I had been awarded music exec of the year for the third straight time. My ego was flying high. But the tragic news put my soaring ego in place. I was destroyed. Otis was only twenty-six. I was asked to give the eulogy at the memorial in Macon. Aretha had already begun the sessions and I asked her if she wanted to join me. She said it would simply be too devastating. So we closed down the studio for a day when I flew off to Georgia. It was an amazing service. Joe Simon sang ‘Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross.’ Johnnie Taylor sang ‘I’ll Be Standing By.’ Everyone was in tears—James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Isaac Hayes, Joe Tex, Arthur Conley, Solomon Burke, Don Covay—the complete soul royalty. I said, ‘Otis’s “Respect” had become an anthem of hope for people everywhere. Respect is something that Otis achieved. Otis sang, “Respect when I come home.” And Otis has come home.’ I only wished that Aretha had been there to sing that song.

  “I was back in the studio the next day. Aretha wanted to hear all about the service and I spared her no detail. Tears fell from her eyes as I described the memorial. Aretha needed no extra motivation to sing her heart out. She did that no matter what. But if many of the vocals on Lady Soul seem to have an even greater depth, I believe it’s because Otis was on Aretha’s mind.”

  “I think Lady Soul contains Ree’s best singing,” said Carolyn. “I look at it as her greatest album—and not just because she sang my ‘Ain’t No Way.’ I love it for the two tunes that Ree wrote, ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ and ‘Good to Me As I Am to You.’ Erma and I sang on them both. Aretha liked to call me the writer in the family, but just as she had the big talent as a singer, she had that same big talent as a composer. The difference is that she pursued the singing with all she had but slacked off on the writing.”

  The two landmark songs from Lady Soul were not written by Aretha. “Chain of Fools” was composed by Don Covay, and “A Natural Woman” was the creation of Carole King and Gerry Goffin. (Wexler suggested the title and, in appreciation, King and Goffin credited him as a cowriter.)

  Arif Mardin, the Turkish-American cohort of the Ertegun brothers who became a staff arranger and eventually a major producer at Atlantic, worked with Wexler and Tom Dowd on Aretha’s early albums.

  “I was listed as the arranger of ‘Chain of Fools,’ but I can’t take credit,” Arif told me. “Aretha walked into the studio with the chart fully formed inside her head. The arrangement is based around the harmony vocals provided by Carolyn and Erma. To add heft, the Sweet Inspirations joined in. The vision of the song is entirely Aretha’s.”

  “We augmented Aretha’s vision to some degree,” said Wexler. “Joe South did a Pops Staples number on guitar by tuning his guitar down and boosting the tremolo. That created a signature intro that set off the fireworks. When we were through, I was so excited that I played the pre-mastered version for everyone I knew, including the great songwriter Ellie Greenwich. ‘Aren’t the backgrounds fabulous?’ I asked. ‘They are,’ she said, ‘but I hear another vocal part.’ ‘Impossible,’ I said. ‘Want to hear it, Jerry?’ I did. Ellie sang it and, just like that, I whisked her into the studio, where she recorded it, making the super-thick harmonies that much thicker.”

  “Aretha didn’t write ‘Chain,’ ” said Carolyn, “but she might as well have. It was her story. When we were in the studio putting on the backgrounds with Ree doing lead, I knew she was singing about Ted. Listen to the lyrics talking about how for long years she thought he was her man. Then she found out she was nothing but a link in the chain. Then she sings that her father told her to come on home. Well, he did. She sings about how her doctor said to take it easy. Well, he did too. She was drinking so much we thought she was on the verge of a breakdown. The line that slew me, though, was the one that said how one of these mornings the chain is gonna break but until then she’ll take all she can take. That summed it up. Ree knew damn well that this man had been doggin’ her since Jump Street. But somehow she held on and pushed it to the breaking point. I can’t listen to that song without thinking about the tipping point in her long ugly thing with Ted.”

  If “Chain of Fools” defined Aretha’s relationship to an abusive man, “Natural Woman” pointed to her inner strength, the elusive element in her character that Wexler recognized as essential to her emotional survival. King and Goffin placed the natural woman in a romantic context. It is a man who is “the key to her peace of mind.” Aretha, however, took it to church. She told interviewers that she heard the song as a prayer. She was praising and singing to the Lord. When her soul was in the lost and found, it wasn’t a man who claimed it, it was God.

  “The song did have a hymn-like quality to it,” Arif Mardin explained, “which was why we employed a more traditional written arrangement. Spooner Oldham played that very soulful introduction on acoustic piano. It was Aretha, though, who showed him exactly what she wanted him to play. She loved the song to the point where she said she wanted to concentrate on the vocal and vocal alone. I had written a string chart and horn chart to augment the chorus and hired Ralph Burns to conduct. After just a couple of takes, we had it. That’s when Ralph turned to me with wonder in his eyes. Ralph was one of the most celebrated arrangers of the modern era. He had done ‘Early Autumn’ for Woody Herman and Stan Getz, and ‘Georgia on My Mind’ for Ray Charles. He’d worked with everyone. ‘This woman comes from another planet’ was all Ralph said. ‘She’s just here visiting.’ ”

  Eric Clapton dropped by the session, brought to the studio by his mentor, Ahmet Ertegun. Clapton was at the Atlantic studios recording Disraeli Gears, the Cream album that included “Sunshine of Your Love.” Coincidentally, on his record, Clapton was using Tom Dowd, Aretha’s engineer.

  “Eric came by when Aretha was laying down the vocal to ‘Good to Me As I Am to You,’ ” said Wexler. “It was a blistering blues ballad, one of those songs with a strong autobiographical strain—Aretha sending a message to her man, or, for that matter, all men: Treat me right or get out. Later, when the copyright papers were turned in, I saw Ted White’s name as a cowriter but Aretha said that was just for legal reasons. She assured me that she wrote the song all by her lonesome. Anyway, she was blowing the roof off the studio, singing the holy shit out of this song, when Ahmet heard a spot for some guitar licks. He encouraged Eric to take a stab. I was for it. But Eric, great as he was, was spooked at the idea of playing behind the mighty Aretha. He flubbed. Much to his credit, though, he came by the next day and, with Aretha no longer in the studio, played the part perfectly. His riffs were tasteful and right on time. Eric wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last musician to be intimidated by the Queen.

  “Even though Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati loved the way Aretha covered their ‘Groovin’,’ I think they had some doubts later when her version got more praise than theirs. Earlier, Ahmet
and I had signed the Rascals to Atlantic through their manager, Sid Bernstein, the man who brought the Beatles to America. I remember Sid asking me, ‘Did she have to sing it so goddamn good? Now she’s got fans thinking that the Rascals’ hit—the fuckin’ original—was a cover of her version.’ ”

  “I love all of Lady Soul,” said Erma, “but the song that moved me most was ‘People Get Ready.’ Everyone in the Franklin family had nothing but respect for Curtis Mayfield, who wrote and had recorded the song. We called him the Gentle Giant and saw him as a modern-day Duke Ellington. He was touched with deep, divine genius. Ree felt the divinity in his music and if you listen to the fade of the song, you hear her break into prayer. Those are her words, not Curtis’s, when she says, ‘I thank you because I’m living,’ before saying, ‘I thank you today because I need a new beginning.’ That’s the perfect definition of where she was at. Our father taught us gratitude. She was grateful for all the wonderful things that were happening to her. But she was also in the midst of realizing that she couldn’t go on this way for much longer. She needed a new beginning.”

  Despite that realization, Aretha saw the end of 1967—the biggest year of her career—with Ted White still by her side.

  “She was afraid to let him go,” said Carolyn. “Fear had a hold on her.”

  “Her career was kicking into high gear,” Wexler explained. “Contending and resolving both the professional and personal challenges were too much. She didn’t think she could do both, and I didn’t blame her. Few people could. So she let the personal slide and concentrated on the professional. Professionally, her career was rocketing into the stratosphere. With Lady Soul, she was easily the most beloved artist in the country.

  “At the same time, she gave a large piece of her life over to the civil rights cause. She jumped into the political fray at this exact moment when everything was breaking loose. She could have easily excused herself from the political rallies and benefits that she headlined, but she didn’t. When Dr. King called for her services, she was always there—in Chicago, in Atlanta, it didn’t matter where. She was his staunch supporter.”

  “At the end of 1967,” remembered Ruth Bowen, “I fully expected Aretha to have a breakdown. I don’t say this disparagingly. Given her position, most people would break down. She was locked into a nasty marriage that she wasn’t ready to end because she was afraid that if she left her husband/manager, he’d ruin her career. Also Aretha hates bad publicity and she thought negative press would also ruin her career. Her father and Dr. King were putting pressure on her to sing everywhere, and she felt obligated. The record company was also screaming for more product. And I had a mountain of offers on my desk that kept getting higher with every passing hour. They wanted her in Europe. They wanted her in Latin America. They wanted her in every major venue in the U.S. TV was calling. She was being asked to do guest appearances on every show from Carol Burnett to Andy Williams to the Hollywood Palace. She wanted to do them all and she wanted to do none of them. She wanted to do them all because she’s an entertainer who burns with ambition. She wanted to do none of them because she was emotionally drained. She needed to go away and renew her strength. I told her that at least a dozen times. She said she would, but she didn’t listen to me. I don’t blame her. Entertainers are looking for glory, and at the end of 1967, Aretha was being offered more glory than at any time in her life. In 1968 that glory was magnified tenfold. But then again, so was the heartbreak that has haunted her ever since she was a child.”

  Heartbreak or not, she appeared on prime-time network TV when the Kraft Music Hall aired on December 27. Other performers included twenty-one-year-old Liza Minnelli and thirty-two-year-old Woody Allen.

  In this same period, she appeared on Mike Douglas’s TV show and, seated at the piano, sang a duet with Frankie Valli—a cover of Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life.” Valli, the superb lead singer of the Four Seasons and acolyte of the great Little Jimmy Scott, was practically blown off his stool. Aretha’s power overwhelmed him.

  In the December 28, 1967, year-end edition of Jet, this item ran in Charles Higgins’s People Are Talking About column:

  “Aretha Franklin tells chums she doesn’t need a house because she recently purchased a four-bedroom beauty (estimated cost: $60,000) on Detroit’s exclusive Northwest Side… her husband, Ted White, just bought her a lovely white mini-mink coat. So, she asks, ‘How about Santa bringing me just a little more love?’ ”

  “The world was showering love on my sister,” said Erma, “but that at-home love—the kind of love we need to get by—wasn’t coming her way. As a singer, she was enjoying more success than ever before, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t suffering.”

  15. YEAR OF YEARS

  In 1968—the year of the Tet offensive, the rising revolts in the streets of America, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the race riots, and the brutal Democratic Convention in Chicago—Aretha Franklin, at twenty-six, became the most admired recording artist in the country. And yet, according to her siblings, manager, producer, and booking agent, she had never been more miserable.

  “Ree was at the crossroads,” said Carolyn, “and didn’t know which way to go. She sang a song by Ronnie Shannon, the same guy who wrote ‘I Never Loved a Man,’ that said, ‘I just can’t see myself leaving you.’ But then she sang another song, one that she wrote. She called it ‘Think.’ Ted put his name on it, but Ted had nothing to do with it. I was there when Aretha wrote it, all by herself. She tells him to think what he’s trying to do to her. She cries out for her freedom. She sang ‘Think’ as powerfully as anything she’d ever sung in her life.”

  “I’m sure ‘Think’ had personal meaning for Aretha,” said Jerry Wexler. “But it also resonated on a large cultural level. Young people were telling the war establishment to think what they were doing. Black America was telling white America to think what they were doing. The song spoke to everyone, and, like ‘Respect,’ became another way in which Aretha became a spokesperson for her generation.”

  “Think,” part of Aretha Now, her fourth Atlantic album, didn’t come out until the spring of 1968.

  In January of 1968, backed by the miniskirted Sweet Inspirations, she had torn apart “Chain of Fools” on the Jonathan Winters Show.

  Billboard reported that in Inglewood, California, on January 23, “Aretha Franklin launched the new $16 million Forum’s entry as a concert facility.” The article went on to say that, improbable as it might seem, she had opened the show with “No Business Like Show Business,” a throwback to her mainstream Columbia material.

  “We had nothing to do with her concert presentations,” said Wexler. “That was strictly her domain. She had off nights, of course, but on her on nights, Aretha was the consummate performer. In my view she was challenged by what I consider lapses in taste. This has not only to do with some of her more outlandish stage outfits, but the songs she chose. I remember that I once gently asked Aretha whether she just possibly might think that her Judy Garland/Al Jolson–style numbers might not work in the turbulent sixties. She looked at me like I was crazy. She didn’t say these words, but her expression told me, You worry about the records and I’ll worry about my show.”

  The accolades kept coming.

  The mayor of Detroit, James Cavanagh, came to her concert at the city’s Cobo Hall on February 16 to hand her a proclamation declaring Aretha Franklin Day. Dr. King himself flew in for the occasion, citing her extraordinary service to his Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

  King’s appearance was a complete surprise to Aretha. It was the last time she saw him alive.

  That same night, three trade magazines—Record World, Billboard, and Cash Box—each presented her with a plaque calling her the female vocalist of the year.

  “This was the point at which I believe she took the queen thing seriously,” said Erma. “But who could blame her? Awards were coming from organizations all over the world. The honors were making her dizzy.”

  “Th
e honors made her sing even harder,” said Cecil, who was there that night. “The honors took her to a new place in her artistry. Never in my life—not in church, not at any show or any concert—have I heard folks scream like they screamed that night at Cobo. When she sang ‘Respect,’ the crowd woke up the dead and the dead danced a dance of joy.

  “Daddy, of course, was beaming with pride. After the concert, he met with Dr. King. I heard Dr. King discuss the situation in Memphis where two sanitation workers had been crushed to death by a faulty truck. The conditions under which those workers operated were appalling, and the union struck. Dr. King told my father that he needed his help in what was shaping up as the next great battle in the civil rights struggle. Daddy assured him he would do what he could, and, in fact, in March my father did travel to Memphis and lend his support.”

  Reverend Franklin was back in Detroit when, on April 4, Dr. King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

  “My father called me with the news,” said Cecil. “I’m not sure how he heard but the first thing he said was that he’d been trying to call Aretha and had not been able to get through. Aretha was in the midst of her worst period with Ted. On top of that, the crazy demands of her career were growing each day. She was planning to go on this monster European tour and had the world on her mind. Daddy worried about what the news would do to her. His phone was ringing off the wall and he asked me to try to reach her. When I did, she had already heard and was very shook. Because Aretha was Dr. King’s favorite singer, I knew that Mrs. King would want her to sing at the funeral. I said, ‘Ree, you’ve got a lot going on. If you’re not up to it, don’t worry about it.’ ‘No, Cecil,’ she said, ‘if I’m asked, I’ll go. I have to.’ And of course she did.”