by David Ritz
In The Soundtrack of My Life, Davis’s autobiography, he wrote, diplomatically, “She went through pirouettes and dancing with very impressive agility.”
“Mr. Davis was the one man she seemed to respect above all others,” said Vaughn. “She felt that because he had knowledge of and access to all the current hit writers and hit producers, she couldn’t afford to alienate him. At the same time, I often heard her tell him that she was also going to record her own compositions. She didn’t need his approval for that. That was a given.”
“Including songs she had written on each album was a way to guarantee extra income,” said Dick Alen. “You could hardly blame her for that.”
“I think if she had focused more or been open to collaborate more, Aretha might have added to that short list of hit songs that she wrote,” said Billy Preston. “But if I ask the average Aretha fan to name one song she wrote after leaving Atlantic in the seventies, I’ll get a blank stare. Same with Ray Charles. What did he write after ‘What’d I Say’? You can’t tell me because that was his last self-penned hit.”
“I wouldn’t call my sister lazy,” said Vaughn, “because every year she does travel and play a certain amount of dates. But when she’s home she can lack a certain discipline. Coming out of the military, discipline is my second nature. With Aretha, though, she has to fight the tendency to just hang around the house for weeks at a time, sitting on the couch and doing nothing but watching TV and eating. A couple of times I tried to say something about how those habits can be debilitating, but she bit my head off—so I never opened my mouth again.”
The idea of singing a duet with the great Teddy Pendergrass, then in a wheelchair, was enough to get Aretha off the couch and onto the stage at the Mann Music Center in Philadelphia.
For decades Erma Franklin had lived with the notion that her musical gifts were largely underappreciated. So it was particularly cheering when, in November of 1992, her career was briefly revived: her version of “Piece of My Heart,” featured in a new European commercial for Levi’s jeans, was released in England. It sold 100,000 in the UK alone and was played on the Continent as well. Due to its widespread popularity, Erma was asked to shoot a video.
“I loved it all,” she told me, “and was excited to be back in the public eye—even if the public was Great Britain rather than America. The English have such a deep appreciation of our music that I couldn’t help but be flattered by the attention. I received a couple of lucrative offers to appear in London. They requested that Aretha and I do a concert together. Millions were being offered. I had long ago accepted and empathized with my sister’s fear of flying and told the promoters that she would never agree. The promoters countered with a half dozen first-class tickets on a luxury liner. For a while Aretha considered it but never made the commitment. Then the deadline passed and so did the opportunity. I had no illusions that it would have resuscitated my long-dormant public profile. I just thought it would have been fun. Basically, though, I continued to derive great satisfaction from my work at Boysville, then the largest child-care agency in Michigan. To see the rehabilitation of children who had been neglected, delinquent, and often abused was a beautiful thing. At this point in my life, even if I could have had a recording or concert career, I’m not sure I would have chosen to do so. I was so grateful to God that I had survived the crazy emotions of an earlier life in show business and continued to pray that my sister could keep surviving as well.”
The survival of Aretha’s career, both artistically and commercially, was indeed nothing short of remarkable. Just when you suspected that she was on an irreversible downward slide, she seemed to find a way to get back up. Given her status as one of the great singers of the century, opportunities came her way. When filmmaker Spike Lee sought a grand conclusion to his 1992 film Malcolm X, he turned to Aretha. Aretha reached out to Arif Mardin, and his arrangement of Donny Hathaway’s “Someday We’ll All Be Free” put her back in the same down-home churchy mode of Amazing Grace, her classic gospel album. As she sang the song over the credits of Spike Lee’s film, the irony was inescapable: the story of one of Islam’s most famous converts is set to a Christian-sounding anthem.
As her vocal interpretations continued to soar, her financial situation hit rock bottom. At the end of the year, the IRS put a $225,000 tax lien on Aretha’s home in Bloomfield Hills due to a dispute over her 1991 taxes. “While she hasn’t been accused of a crime,” wrote Jet, “the lien represents the amount the legendary singer would have to pay the government if she sold the property.”
“Actually the IRS might have been doing us a favor by initiating those actions,” said Vaughn, “because, in response, Aretha would go to work. If she were inactive a long period of time, only something scary like a letter from the government would get her going. That made her realize that, win or lose, she needed to be out there earning money. I wasn’t privy to the details about her tax problems, and maybe she was being unfairly singled out, but I do know that weeks after she got the IRS bill, she was on the phone with Ruth Bowen or Dick Alen looking for some bookings.”
For all her money problems, Aretha did not hesitate to work for free if it involved honoring an artist she respected. In December, for example, she appeared at the Kennedy Center Honors in tribute to jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton.
“I have a rule about supporting Republicans,” Aretha explained, “and Lionel was a lifelong Republican. But when it came to Hamp, I broke my rule, because my dad loved him. We all did. Hamp had worshipped at New Bethel, and during a concert in Detroit, where Daddy had taken me and Erma, Hamp asked us onstage to do a little dance while he played behind us. Outside of church, that was probably my first time on a public stage. So I had to break party lines and honor the great Lionel Hampton and forgive the fact that he voted for the wrong party.”
A month later, Aretha was back with the right party, performing at several of Bill Clinton’s inaugural events.
“I saw how my sister is in her element when she appears at these galas with presidents and princes,” said Vaughn. “She really does become a queen and relates to them on an equal level. It was fascinating to see these foreign dignitaries responding to her like she was just as important and impressive as them. That’s when I first understood that Aretha is genuine royalty.”
Her singing in the nation’s capital garnered positive reviews, but her wardrobe did not. Animal rights activists complained about her full-length Russian sable coat.
Time magazine titled the article “Respect? Fur-get It.” Reportedly, PETA sympathizers Alec Baldwin and Chrissie Hynde were outraged that Aretha had worn fur. A small furor followed.
“Aretha heard about the controversy and asked me to find the articles criticizing her,” said Vaughn. “I didn’t want to do it. You know what the queen does when the messenger brings [bad] news. I pretended like I couldn’t find the clippings but she wouldn’t accept the explanation. So I did what was asked of me. Fortunately, she didn’t take it out on me—but she did carry on for a good thirty minutes about who the hell are they to criticize what she wears. She wanted to know how many cows were slaughtered to make their leather shoes and what about the diamonds they wore—didn’t they come from those South African mines where workers were treated like slaves? She was livid.”
Aretha wrote a brief defense in Vanity Fair. “We’re all using a lot of leather with respect to our shoes and handbags and things like that, so come on, let’s be for real.”
In April of 1993, her public relations were lifted somewhat by her Fox television special Aretha Franklin: Duets. The concert, a benefit for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, took place at New York City’s Nederlander Theater. Bonnie Raitt, Elton John, Rod Stewart, and Gloria Estefan performed. Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro gave spoken tributes. Other than a warm and winsome duet with Smokey Robinson on his hit song “Just to See Her,” I found it a dull and schmaltzy show-business affair.
Jon Pareles in the New York Times saw it differently: “Perhaps by add
ing competition, ‘Duets’ brought out Ms. Franklin’s improvisational genius. She can summon the agility of jazz, the pain of the blues, the sultriness of pop and the fervor of gospel, and while her voice is smokier now than it was in her 1960s heyday, she has all the range she needs.”
In Vanity Fair, James T. Jones IV, describing the unfortunate dance sequence in which the singer’s voluminous breasts were on the very edge of full exposure, wrote, “Others were left speechless by a surreal ballet sequence in which Aretha, in a tutu, attempted pirouettes.”
The next morning, nationally syndicated columnist Liz Smith went on the attack, writing, “She [Aretha] must know she’s too bosomy to wear such clothing, but clearly she just doesn’t care what we think, and that attitude is what separates mere stars from true divas.”
Deeply wounded, Aretha fired back in a statement to Smith that she issued to the press: “How dare you be so presumptuous as to presume you could know my attitude with respect to anything other than music… Obviously I have enough of what it takes to wear a bustier and I haven’t had any complaints; I’m sure if you could you would… When you get to be a noted and respected fashion editor please let us all know.”
“Like all women, Aretha is highly sensitive to insensitive criticism,” said Erma. “Also like many women, when she looks in the mirror, she sees what she wants to see. She wants to see someone who’s a lot thinner than she is, and she wants to see someone—herself thirty years ago—who had a dream of being a ballet dancer. She also had a dream of being an opera singer. Aretha’s not one to give up dreams, and for that I have to admire her. We don’t always make the best choices, but when we stop dreaming, all those choices go away.”
Emboldened by her Liz Smith counterattack, Aretha renewed her vow to conquer her fear of flying. She was actually on the verge of boarding a plane for the short flight from Toronto to Detroit when, at the last minute, she panicked and chartered a bus to drive her home.
“I really thought that this time Ree was going to do it,” said Erma. “She was so determined. And, God bless her, she really tried, but fear got the best of her. My opinion is that she never got to the bottom of that fear. It’s all about control. Aretha needs to feel in control. Riding on her bus, she can tell the driver to go faster or slow down. She can tell him to change routes or to pull over at a rest stop. On the plane she feels completely out of control—and that’s the one feeling she can’t tolerate.”
Aretha felt that she could exert control over one vitally important thing—her career. Having influenced the latest crop of hit makers, she saw no reason why she herself couldn’t realize more commercial success.
The fall of 1993 marked her thirteenth year at Arista, which was roughly the same amount of time she had spent at Atlantic. Going back to her signing at Columbia, thirty-three years earlier, the goal had never changed: cut a hit. At age fifty-one, she was convinced that she could be as popular as hot stars like Madonna, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, and Paula Abdul.
“Aretha used to say that it’s all about getting the right track and the right producer,” said Erma. “She’d hear Janet Jackson do that ‘Rhythm Nation’ or Madonna do her ‘Vogue’ and say, ‘Hey, I invented this rhythm nation. I started this vogue. If I had gotten those songs, I could have turned them into even bigger hits.’ It was my sister’s competitive side that sustained her and gave her the strength to get back out there and trade blows with this new young crop. The only problem was this concept they called imaging. After MTV, you had to have videos—and your look was almost as important as your song. Tina Turner excelled at imaging because, even though she’s actually a couple of years older than Aretha, Tina stayed in shape. Aretha didn’t, and she paid the price.”
“My sister told me she was just too tired to cut an entire new album,” said Vaughn. “But she was willing to record three new singles that would be part of a greatest-hits package.”
Those singles and their producers were, as usual, picked by Clive Davis. His first choice was a production group called the C + C Music Factory. In 1990, its members had released an album of their own, Gonna Make You Sweat, which sold over five million copies and contained four singles that got to number one on the dance charts, including the title cut, “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” and “Things That Make You Go Hmmm.” The style was an unapologetic and infectious throwback to straight-up seventies disco. Despite her previous lamentations about the restrictions of disco, Aretha went with Clive’s recommendation and put her vocals atop a C + C dance track called “A Deeper Love.” Aretha gave it a shot, singing with what feels like determined—as opposed to natural—effort. The single was played in the clubs but didn’t make a dent on the charts. It came and went quickly.
She had a far more comfortable rapport with the team of Babyface, L. A. Reid, and Daryl Simmons, who wrote in the kicked-back R&B groove that echoed old-school masters Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield.
“Willing to Forgive,” a Babyface/Simmons song, allowed Aretha room to breathe and time to tell the story. It lopes along with the kind of sassy strut that’s far more suitable to Aretha’s persona than the frantic dance demands of “A Deeper Love.” The same is true of “Honey,” a sultry ballad that Aretha could have sung in the sixties. “Willing to Forgive” proved popular, a top-five R&B hit.
With these three new songs attached to Aretha’s first greatest-hits package, the album wound up going platinum, a testimony to the strength of her previous hits on the label—from “Jump to It” to “Freeway of Love” to “I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)”—and to Clive Davis’s phenomenal ability to keep an aging classic artist current.
“If you put Aretha’s Atlantic material next to her Arista stuff, there’s no comparison,” said Jerry Wexler. “Artistically, Atlantic wins, hands down. But if you count up the money we made with Aretha as opposed to Clive, Clive is the clear winner. What makes his victory even more remarkable is the fact that he had to market her when she was clearly past her prime. And yet he still found a way to present and package her in products that sold big-time. Incredible.”
“I’ll go to my grave longing for the great Aretha Franklin albums she could have made,” said Carmen McRae, “instead of the schlock she kept turning out. I remember talking to Shirley Horn about this very thing. Sarah Vaughan had just died and I was recording a tribute to her. Shirley, a great jazz singer herself, was playing piano. ‘You know who should really be doing this tribute to Sarah, Shirley?’ I asked. ‘You’re thinking of Aretha, aren’t you?’ said Shirley. I was. ‘Well, forget about it, Carmen, because she’ll be chasing after hit songs long after you and I are dead and gone.’ ‘Well, ain’t that a shame,’ I said. ‘Not really,’ said Shirley, ‘not if she finds something as good as “Dr. Feelgood.” ’ ”
Aretha also participated in what some considered a less than stellar marketing trend meant to keep older singers on the charts—a full duets album. This time, the artist was seventy-eight-year-old Frank Sinatra. The first of his two Duets albums was a crafty exercise in musical salesmanship. It was an enormous success—the only Sinatra album to sell over three million copies—but artistically, it was nothing more than a curiosity. His pairing with Aretha, “What Now My Love,” serves as a case in point.
They’re singing in different studios at different times and, unsurprisingly, sometimes sound like they’re singing different songs. After Aretha’s grandiose introduction, the band breaks into a straight-ahead jazz groove with Aretha shadowing Sinatra. The shadow doesn’t match the master, and both masters—Aretha and Frank—sound relieved when the song is finally sung.
Phil Ramone, the record’s producer, saw the pairing as a triumph.
“I took the completed track to Detroit,” he told me. “Frank’s vocal was already on there, and Aretha was excited about singing the song with Sinatra. She got to the studio early and was completely prepared. She knew that I had worked with Frank many times before and wanted me to know how much she admired his artistry. ‘Why don’t
you tell him?’ I said. ‘How?’ she asked. ‘Before you start singing, just put a message on tape.’ She hesitated briefly and then did just that, openly and sincerely telling Frank how much he meant to her and how much he had taught her about phrasing, intonation, and dynamics. Of course we didn’t include it on the record itself, but Frank got to hear Aretha’s beautiful spoken tribute. Then we went to work on her vocals. She already had all her ideas mapped out, and, needless to say, they were brilliant.”
In 1994, Aretha returned to form and classic rhythm and blues by participating in the album A Tribute to Curtis Mayfield. She hired her longtime associate Arif Mardin to arrange and produce Mayfield’s magnificent “The Makings of You.”
“She wanted me to leave lots of space at the end for a long vamp,” said Mardin. “Because she so deeply admired Curtis’s genius for infusing R-and-B motifs with jazz flavoring and jazz voicings, she wanted to conclude her interpretation with a sequence of scat singing. Aretha is justifiably celebrated for the fusing of gospel and R-and-B, but I think her scatting has been overlooked. To my mind, she’s the first and best singer to execute what I call soul scatting. That’s where you hear her uncanny ability to improvise over the chord changes as a jazz musician but one rooted in the great soul blues tradition of Sam Cooke and Little Willie John.”
The recording that appeared on the album—along with contributions by, among others, Steve Winwood, Bruce Springsteen, Lenny Kravitz, Whitney Houston, and Eric Clapton—is memorable for Aretha’s relaxed approach. Her rapport with Curtis’s material, so evident in Sparkle, is as strong as ever. But it is her remarkable appearance on Donnie Simpson’s Video Soul television program that demands repeated viewing on YouTube.