Icon: Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin was groomed from birth to sing. The daughter of a Detroit reverend, Franklin started recording at age 14 – first gospel, then pop. The string of records she made between 1967 and 1974, though, are the peak of the great American diva’s magnificent career: rolling, roaring, heartstopping soul music (with flashes of rock ‘n ‘roll), political and sexual and spiritual all at once. Her interpretive gifts shine glory on everything she sings, but on her classic Atlantic albums, she was also blessed with spectacular material and sympathetic musicians – for years, you could hardly turn on the radio without hearing her latest hit.
The Queen of Soul
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Franklin had already been recording for more than a decade when she moved to Atlantic Records, teamed up with Jerry Wexler who had the brilliant idea of getting her to play piano and a crew of Southern soul musicians, and released this 1967 landmark. It became the blueprint for the next seven years of her career: its devotional title track and the gale-force cover of Otis Redding's "Respect" were the immediate hits, but the whole thing sketched out the new Aretha as a passionate, demanding lover whose passion and demands also spoke to the politics of black America, and who explicitly cast herself in the tradition of master pop singers brought up on gospel.
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The first four songs here, including the gigantic hit "Chain of Fools," are Aretha the newly minted superstar stepping out from behind the gospel pulpit to address the secular world. The rest, from the "I Never Loved a Man" outtake (!) "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" to her sister (and backup singer) Carolyn Franklin's deep ballad "Ain't No Way," are all about the pulse and ache of sex they're not come-ons, exactly, but meditations on what happens behind the bedroom door, and what that means to everything outside it. And the all-star band, featuring Bobby Womack, Spooner Oldham, and (briefly) Eric Clapton, rolls toward the blues right alongside her.
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As Aretha hustled into the studio to record a follow-up to Lady Soul, her marriage to Ted White was falling apart, and black America was in shock over the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., less than two weeks before maybe that's where the cries of "freedom!" in "Think" come from. So she focused on the sweet things instead, recasting Dionne Warwick's hit "I Say a Little Prayer" in a gospel-soul mode and reaching back for covers of old Ray Charles and Sam Cooke favorites. Still, there's a poignant undercurrent to these love songs and declarations of self-possession, a touch of hurt that makes even the cheerful throwaways linger.
![Lady Soul [w/bonus selections] album cover](http://images.emusic.com/music/images/album/117/573/11757386/300x300.jpg)
The Rock Diva
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In 1971, San Francisco's Fillmore was Hippie Central, and this document of Franklin's three-night stand is a record of the moment when she crossed over to a rock audience in a big way. On the first half of the original album (which is expanded here with a disc of alternate performances), she tears through "Love the One You're With" and Beatles and Bread songs. At this stage of her career, she could've gotten over by singing the tax code: she and her backup band (saxophonist King Curtis and the Kingpins) are on fire, and when Ray Charles turns up for a 20-minute blowout on "Spirit in the Dark," Hippie Central becomes the most soulful room in the universe.
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For the first few years of her career, Franklin had mostly recorded pop standards, jazz tunes and ballads. So kicking off the follow-up to I Never Loved a Man with a Rolling Stones cover was a great big middle finger extended to everyone who'd tried to get her to sing more politely. Aretha Arrives was banged out in four days while "Respect" was still perched at #1 on the R&B chart. Franklin pulled rock, blues and country standards out of her bag, and although she only scored one hit single this time ("Baby I Love You"), the album has a cheerfully casual mood: freed from having to worry about breaking through, she could Aretha-ize whatever she felt like.
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The most profoundly despairing album in Franklin's discography, recorded in the depths of heartbreak — she breaks down in tears thinking of the happy couple in "Call Me." She also finds the secret pain and glory in some unlikely songs, including "Son of a Preacher Man" (which had been written for her in the first place), the title track (which gets the most despondent reading anyone's ever given it), the Band's "The Weight," and two Beatles numbers. Nobody would have imagined that "Eleanor Rigby"'s stately evocation of loneliness had a gospel revival meeting ready to burst out of it, but that's why Aretha's a genius, right? Hidden gem: the harrowing blues "It Ain't Fair."
