Aretha Franklin - The Secrets of Lady Soul

It's not only in our own times that artists of great talent are often left on the margins of the record industry, little known and little respected. The same thing happened to the great Aretha Franklin in the first half of the Sixties. And in her case, the dark period didn't last for just a single album or season, but a full six years. Daughter of Reverend C. L. Franklin, one of the most famous and respected Black preachers of the era, it was precisely during his services that she began to captivate audiences, displaying not only a remarkably accomplished vocal technique but also interpretations full of passion and humanity. While still a girl, Franklin modeled her voice on the great gospel singers of the time, such as Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward. This, above all, was the mistake that initially kept Franklin on the margins: a lack of personality. All the albums recorded between 1960 and 1966 for Columbia lack the unmistakable, unruly, compelling interpretive style of her later years. But that's not the only reason. When she moved to Atlantic in 1967 and finally found her due recognition, Franklin was only 24, but already a woman who had lived through a great deal. A mother of two children, born when she was 15 and 17, a divorce, and a career that had so far been meteoric but without real success. These first dark years of personal and professional life would mark her deeply. Still outside the big league, there was nothing she could do but hope that someone would notice her incredible potential and give her all the help she could get. That someone eventually arrived, and his name was Jerry Wexler, a white producer at Atlantic. Following his sound advice, Franklin left Columbia and signed with this new label.

Wexler believed in her unconditionally and had decided to make her the queen of the new soul. After six years best forgotten, in 1967 Aretha Franklin was finally touched by fortune for the first time. And given how completely the situation would be turned around, one could even call it magic. Magical indeed was the audition Franklin held for Atlantic at Muscle Shoals Studios in Alabama, where Black music was being reborn. It was there that Otis Redding had recorded some of his masterpieces. Once again, the choice of that studio was Wexler's. Finally, someone who knew how to guide her. As Wexler often recalled, on that day he watched a young woman transform from the insecure performer she had been in previous years into a powerhouse of strength and focus. Legend also has it that Aretha clashed with all the musicians, that someone made unwelcome advances toward her, and that the day ended in insults - but that matters little, because we're talking about legend here, about an event that has gone down in history. On that day Aretha recorded some of the songs that would later appear on her first masterpiece album for Atlantic, I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You.

But Franklin didn't suddenly become happy and at peace. Those six dark years would always weigh on her, but they would also masterfully shape all her performances. The deep melancholy those events caused allowed Franklin to infuse her performances with her fears, her guilt, and her moments of joy, always sudden and spontaneous.

Wexler himself recalled that when he heard her sing, he understood that the only way for Franklin to reach sublime performances was to let her sing exactly as she wanted, without telling her anything, without interrupting her. And this was certainly Wexler's most important insight about her. What has literally bewitched everyone ever since isn't so much her technique of singing above an octave, but rather her interpretive "explosions". Her performances were never calculated in advance, but born from the desire to give voice to her soul. Those sudden high notes at seemingly the least opportune moments of a song, as well as the low tones, are simply the moments when Aretha showed she wasn't just a singer, but above all a human being who suffered and rejoiced through the words of her singing. A kind of spontaneous identification.

From that moment on, no nickname could have suited her better than Lady Soul. Queen of Soul, then, but also the voice of the soul. Not only the greatest soul singer there ever was, but also a performer with a voice that was sublime and devastating at the same time. When Aretha sang, she made the song her own, pushing it toward new meanings through her voice and her interpretation. Just think of Otis Redding's "Respect", which takes on new life and energy in her version.

If other Black female singers of the era were sugary and romantic, Lady Soul was instead aggressive, gritty, or genuinely sorrowful. From 1967 to at least 1970, Aretha was a true soul icon, perfectly embodying the new Black generation's need for spirituality. The unbridled power and joy of these early Atlantic albums - beyond I Never Loved A Man, worth remembering are Take a Look and Aretha '69 - earned her countless gold and platinum records in the US, at an impressive rate for the time. She even landed a cover of Time magazine: she was one of the first female artists to receive that honor, and since she was Black, its historical significance is all the more clear.

The sixties for Lady Soul thus split exactly in two: the darkness of the first half and the light of the second. This contrast, this contradiction within a woman like Aretha who was nonetheless profoundly marked inside by the darkness of her early years, resurfaced in the seventies. A tormented unease accompanied both her personal and artistic life throughout this decade. Spirit In The Dark or Young Gifted And Black underline this moment of suffering and despair. Having grown attached to the energy Lady Soul radiated between 1967 and 1970, people didn't understand (or didn't want to understand) this new phase. So sales plummeted dramatically. But that doesn't mean we can speak of artistic decline. On the contrary, during this period Lady Soul returned to the gospel roots of her early career, recording that Amazing Grace, which enchants, moves and unsettles from the very first listen. For ten years, unfortunately, Aretha fell back if not into the darkness of before, then certainly into the shadows. It was only in 1980, thanks to the musical film "The Blues Brothers", that her light began to shine again, and from then on it never went out. Franklin appeared and sang for just four minutes, but her re-interpretation of "Think" was far more than exhilarating. Lady Soul proved to be a true force of nature. Her voice was now recognized as an immensely precious gift. From then on, no one ever wanted to forget her again. In fact, in 1985 her home state's government declared Aretha "one of Michigan's natural resources". From the eighties onward, the duets are too numerous to count: those with George Michael, Elton John, Whitney Houston, Luciano Pavarotti and Eurythmics are just the most famous. Her appearances became fewer, but the few that remained made all the difference. During the 1998 Night Divas show, Lady Soul (by then in her sixties) demonstrated overwhelming superiority over the divas of the moment, such as Mariah Carey, Shania Twain and Celine Dion. One of her last albums, A Rose Is Still A Rose, was written and produced for her by the then-promising Lauryn Hill.

Aretha Franklin died on August 16, 2018, in Detroit, at the age of 76. She had long been seriously ill, suffering from a form of pancreatic cancer, which she had revealed some years earlier. Her legacy is that of one of the most powerful and unforgettable performers of the twentieth century.

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