We lost Aretha Franklin (1942-2018) on August 16th. She still gets airplay with "Respect" and "Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do)" (1974) or her last #1 pop hit--a duet with George Michael in 1987, "I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)." Yet aside from rabid fans and the deep devotion from fellow musicians, the artistry of Aretha has been forgotten by the masses, who only know a handful of hits.
To my ears, Aretha's long run of brilliant albums and singles spans 1967-1974 and only the Stones were putting out that sort of inspired quality and quantity during those years. Rebounding from her days at Columbia Records (1960-1966), where the unevenness of the arrangements and material kept her from becoming a household name, the dazzling I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You album (her first for Atlantic) found Aretha at the piano, setting the tone for each song and bringing a kind of wallop to her music that had been kept under wraps.
I Never Loved a Man took music that was successful on the radio away from teen trends and into adulthood; here was a 25 year old, powerful yet sometimes vulnerable woman who didn't sound like a kid at all, who convincingly transported the development of soul music via Ray Charles and Sam Cooke into a fresh sound, undeniably captivating. When she and her sister Carolyn (1944-1988) rearranged Otis Redding's "Respect," it became vastly different from the rock band renditions by the Vagrants (with Leslie West) and the Rationals (with Scott Morgan). This was a now M.I.A. era that Steve Van Zandt referred to as a time when the most popular music was the best music--the airwaves opened up for Aretha, Otis, the Stones, Creedence, Sly and the Family Stone, Dusty Springfield and the British Invasion bands, and it's shaped my life in ways that I've never gotten over; similarly, in Graham Parker's 1996 song, "Obsessed With Aretha," he seems to bemoan the '90s, where no one--including Aretha, it seemed--was making music with guts and impact. Attribute that to changing times and the constant shift in contemporary radio.
In Aretha's breakthough year of 1967, older sister Erma (1938-2002) scored a minor hit with "Piece of My Heart," the same song Big Brother & the Holding Company with Janis Joplin turned into a smash with the following year. Erma's version wasn't fully realized, which brings me to perhaps the most stunning version of Aretha's artistry: she took almost any piece of material, whether trivial or great, and made it her own song. Likewise, her musicianship is rarely mentioned; it is Aretha playing those blues and gospel piano riffs on "Think" and "(Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You've Been Gone," which were staples in the days when radio airplay seemed to move mountains for deserving artists. It's no coincidence that the majority of the best Aretha Franklin records are the ones on which she played piano; this was not lost on Paul McCartney, whose loving tweet after she died used the word "musician."
Consider my (for the moment) Top Ten from Lady Soul, more or less chronically listed. Ask me tomorrow, and I'd have a different playlist.
1. "Soulville" (1964): There were some terrific sides cut at Columbia.
2. & 3. From I Never Loved a Man The Way I Love You (1967): The artist reinvents herself on this album with "Dr. Feelgood," an impossibly radiant sexual moment, and it's contrasted by "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man," where 'Ree states with power and reserve that nobody gets to the good stuff until a relationship of a true partnership is established.
4. & 5. From Aretha Now (1968): The best version of Sam Cooke's "You Send Me" of all time, with an endearing shuffle beat--and there's "I Say a Little Prayer," an astonishing interpretation. Dionne Warwick's earlier version was a wonderful record, yet Aretha takes it to a heavenly level, with a propulsive call and response between Aretha and the backup singers.
6. "Spanish Harlem" (1971): Moving Ben E. King's classic into up-t0-the minute soul music, the beat changes from what was a sort of a cha-cha arrangement and into a tough and whimsical arrangement and vocal, spiced with bursts of organ playing and Bernard "Pretty" Purdie's drumming.
7. "Rock Steady" (1971--later on 1972's Young, Gifted and Black): Funk that aims for the stratosphere and hits it, mainly because of Aretha's incredible abandon, but also because of Purdie once again. There are good versions of "Rock Steady" by Shirley Brown (cut in 1974) and Australia's Andrea Marr (recorded in 2017) that ultimately fall short of this scintillating record. Do any oldies stations play this? Shame on us all.
8. From Let Me In Your Life, "A Song for You" (1974): She turns Leon Russell's touching ballad into a mini-masterpiece, with a long electric piano intro--though in this case, I believe it was Richard Tee--and stellar dynamics.
9. "Another Night" (1985): The entire Who's Zoomin' Who album is a triumph of personal style and substance during the 1980s, when drums and keyboards sounded artificial--it was just the way stuff was recorded then. Even Bob Dylan fell into it.
10. "It Hurts Like Hell" (1995): From the Learning to Exhale soundtrack, and an underrated track to this day.
When a masterful artist dies, we sometimes bump them up on our personal list of the greatest artists of all time. Aretha doesn't need a spike from me--she's been in my top five for decades. The Queen of Soul...the Queen of Popular Music, really. What Ms. Franklin did for the arts and social consciousness goes beyond gender or genre; her accomplishments will remain utterly transcendent.