Aretha Franklin

Aretha has had it up to here. She's just turned twenty-four, but everyone's still telling her what to do. First it was her father Clarence Franklin, the well-known Baptist preacher, now it's her husband Ted White, who drags her around like a piece of luggage. Then there was the Columbia team, who spent nine studio albums failing to make her click with the wider public, and now the Atlantic management, with whom she's just signed, is doling out demands and promises while also landing her in a nasty brawl in Alabama. What's a girl to do? The answer, as always, lies in the music: an Otis Redding song, turned inside out with sisters Emma and Carolyn on backing vocals and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section pounding away at the pedals, an anthem to independence as stubborn and roaring as it is direct and taken literally – she even spells it out for you:

R E S P E C T

Which is to say: calm down and let me breathe. That's exactly how “I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You” opens, with one of Aretha Franklin's signature songs: “Respect”, a timeless classic that also hands her a first No. 1 hit. Otis himself is left stunned by this young woman's version, so unusually mature and sharp; there she sits at the piano, steering the band with the precise ear of a Duke Ellington, before unleashing an overflowing voice carrying the entire weight of the African-American experience, from the muddy depths of blues to the sanctity of gospel and the vibrant hope of the March on Washington. Is a star born? Better still, the Queen of Soul is born.

Alabama, year zero

It's easy today to enjoy listening to one of the most enduring albums of the twentieth century, a first-rate songbook sung by a voice recognizable among a thousand others. But making it wasn't a straightforward process.

First of all, Aretha has to shake off the poor reputation she picked up at Columbia, who had her singing plush orchestral pop productions often tailored to the taste of a segregated America; sales were so weak that by the time her contract expired, the singer herself was still in the red. Fortunately, she has options; while Motown had been ruled out years earlier by her father Clarence, who didn't look kindly on Berry Gordy's methods, young Aretha could now sign to Stax and work with Isaac Hayes – a potentially fascinating pairing.

But Atlantic has the best team around: Arif Mardin, the executive with impeccable taste, Jerry Wexler, the do-it-all producer, and Tom Dowd, the sound engineering expert. An "old-school" trio of record men, the kind who know how to make money but also have passion, an ear for quality, and an appetite for the next challenge. They're shrewd too, it must be said, because they know that talent runs as abundant as oxygen among Black artists – all it takes is knowing how to connect the dots.

So Aretha is sent straight to FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to work with a house band capable of conjuring that southern touch that pairs so perfectly with her rich vocal timbre. The chemistry in the room is immediately palpable, and within a few hours two songs are already down on tape: "I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)," penned by songwriter Ronnie Shannon at the request of her husband Ted, is a heart-wrenching blues underscored by bursts of horns and rolling piano, with Aretha sounding permanently on the verge of detonation as she tries to make sense of the conflicting emotions she feels for a man as wrong for her as he is irresistible. Its counterpart is the B-side "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man," a commanding ballad underscored by a thread of organ, on which the singer sets even the most inattentive listener straight, teaching once again the art of respect. They're simple love songs at heart, yet the band's sound, so crisp and springy, makes them glimmer like sunlight on water, and Aretha's voice dives into them like an angel in flight, at last as free as jazz and as powerful as gospel, resurfacing as the Muse of that expression which touches the human soul more than any other: soul music itself.

But soul, at times, is also too much passion, and the Alabama recording sessions soon fall apart. The facts get considerably muddled depending on the source, probably embellished over time to feed the legend, but everyone remembers the brawl that breaks out between husband Ted and one of the trumpet players, accused of openly flirting with Aretha. Wexler also recalls considerable racial tension, since the studio owner, Rick Hall, had assembled a band made up almost entirely of white musicians, despite an explicit request not to do so — alone in the deep cotton-plantation South, surrounded by a group of strangers, Ted and Aretha keep their eyes open, watching their backs too. Some even mention a gun, others a fight that spilled out in front of the hotel where the guests are staying; exaggerations, perhaps, but what's certain is that the next morning Aretha and her husband are already on the first flight back to New York. It once again falls to producer Wexler to salvage the disaster, flying in some of Muscle Shoals' calmer musicians to the Big Apple a few weeks later to continue the sessions.

Synecdoche, New York

The bulk of "I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You" is thus recorded at Atlantic's New York studios, in a setting that keeps the southern warmth intact while proving more comfortable and secure for the singer, helped along by the presence in the room of three other extraordinary women: Emma and Carolyn Franklin, Aretha's own sisters, and legendary gospel singer Cissy Houston, already mother to a young Whitney at this point. It's in this new state of equilibrium that "I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You" becomes what it is: an album that's actually rather simple and sparing with artifice, one in which the vicissitudes of the human condition speak up with instinctive naturalness. Thus, the intense "Drown In My Own Tears" throbs like the very essence of life without ever tipping into melodrama, while "Good Times," originally by Sam Cooke, is revisited with all the breezy savoir faire of a little party that runs into the small hours. And when it's time for the dreamy "Soul Serenade," it's as if the voices of millions of women around the world suddenly found themselves together in a knowing embrace.

The self-penned tracks co-written by Aretha are no less impressive. The bossa nova lilt of "Don't Let Me Lose This Dream" lends just the right amount of stylistic variety to the listen without straying from the album's overall feel, in fact soon blossoming into the most pleading, warm-hearted chorus of the collection. A completely different beast is the tough guitar blues of "Save Me," as black as the roots of her ancestors and sung with a touch of despair, yet never losing the sense of dignity of a people who have managed to lift themselves up in the face of continual tragedy. And then there's the famous "Dr. Feelgood (Love Is A Serious Business)," which opens like a sermon from the pulpit, wrapped in roaring horns, a lingering groove, with the singer letting piano and voice duet with such natural emphasis that it becomes sacred material, like gospel — because love really is a serious business.

Still, it's "Baby, Baby, Baby" that leaves you stunned, such is the intensity with which Aretha climbs the melody, pleading at the top of her lungs as if she were responsible for the fate of every lover on earth — in moments like this, soul reveals itself to the listener in all its timeless allure, capable as it is of instinctively communicating universal, skin-deep emotions that cross every linguistic and geographic border.

From Washington to the Rest of History

Despite some initial reluctance, Aretha chooses to close her album with an unmistakable statement: "A Change Is Gonna Come," once again by Sam Cooke, the anthem of the civil rights uprisings that shook America in the 1960s. Cooke's murder, which took place in December 1964 under circumstances that remain suspicious to this day, shook the African American community to its core, stirring up a unrest destined only to worsen — Malcolm X is assassinated in February 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. a little later, in April 1968. These are extremely tense months, and staying out of such politics is impossible, even criminal, given the situation. But for Aretha, Cooke wasn't just a great songwriter — he was a personal mentor, someone she'd met many times since childhood, when her father Clarence would host him at the family home in Detroit. Carried by piano and gradually adorned with threads of horns and swelling drums, this version of "A Change Is Gonna Come" is steeped in the intimate hush of a torch song in which hope and pain travel side by side, toward the close of an album that is not only memorable from first note to last but also, now, historically significant.

That said, "I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You" shouldn't be remembered as an isolated case within Aretha's discography, even though it is chronologically the first release to introduce the artist to the wider public with a brand-new attitude. While the follow-up "Aretha Arrives," released just months later, still in 1967, may lack the same iconic charge, the following year saw the release of two more stunning albums, "Lady Soul" and "Aretha Now," proof of a brilliant golden period during which Aretha Franklin was a symbol for her community and for the rest of America. To this day, she is still remembered and celebrated as the undisputed Queen of Soul of the twentieth century.

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21/04/2024