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Aretha Franklin: Atlantic Records
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Aretha Franklin is one of the giants of soul music, and indeed of American pop as a whole. More than any other performer, she epitomized soul at its most gospel-charged. Her astonishing run of late-'60s hits with Atlantic Records -- "Respect," "I Never Loved a Man," "Chain of Fools," "Baby I Love You," "I Say a Little Prayer," "Think," "The House That Jack Built," and several others -- earned her the title "Lady Soul," which she has worn uncontested ever since. Yet as much of an international institution as she's become, much of her work -- outside of her recordings for Atlantic in the late '60s and early '70s -- is erratic and only fitfully inspired, making discretion a necessity when collecting her records. Franklin's roots in gospel ran extremely deep. With her sisters Carolyn and Erma (both of whom would ... have recording careers), she sang at the Detroit church of her father, Reverend C.L.
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Aretha Franklin is one of the giants of soul music, and indeed of American pop as a whole. More than any other performer, she epitomized soul at its most gospel-charged. Her astonishing run of late-'60s hits with Atlantic Records -- "Respect," "I Never Loved a Man," "Chain of Fools," "Baby I Love You," "I Say a Little Prayer," "Think," "The House That Jack Built," and several others -- earned her the title "Lady Soul," which she has worn uncontested ever since. Yet as much of an international institution as she's become, much of her work -- outside of her recordings for Atlantic in the late '60s and early '70s -- is erratic and only fitfully inspired, making discretion a necessity when collecting her records.
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Aretha Franklin, a preacher's daughter from Detroit, started out singing gospel as a young child (like so many other black future pop and soul stars). She made her first gospel records in the 50's (in her mid-teens), then went pop with a series of unsuccessful early 60s albums for Columbia. In 1967 she was signed to Atlantic Records and recorded a bunch of gritty R&B sides (with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section) that made her reputation. Since the early 70s Franklin has recorded soul, pop and gospel with varying degrees of success - she still has a hit single or duet from time to time - but at her brief zenith she was the world's foremost soul practioner, and did more than any artist besides James Brown to bring unvarnished, funky R&B into the musical mainstream.
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A lot of people are honoring Aretha Franklin these days, what with greatest-hits record releases, awards and other tributes to her musical triumphs. This rush of retrospection might cause some performers to have the golden-oldies, has-been blues. But Ms. Franklin says she's "far too progressive and contemporary for that."
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Aretha Franklin was born in 1942, in Memphis,, Tennessee. Religion was in her blood because her father was Reverend C.L. Franklin. Aretha’s sisters Carolyn and Emma were singers at the church where their father preached. Gospel singing was extremely popular. Aretha Franklin followed the footsteps of her singing sisters and already had cut a record by the time she was fourteen years old.
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When the late Reverend James Cleveland uttered the above words, it was on the occasion of the taping of Aretha Franklin's now legendary live recording Amazing Grace. The recording was originally taped over two nights in January of 1972 at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles with the Southern California Community Choir, under the directorship of Reverend Cleveland, providing backing support. As Cleveland mentions through out the recording, which was initially released on 1 June 1972, it was indeed a homecoming. At the time that Franklin chose to record Amazing Grace, she had won six Grammy Awards and had 10 Top-10 pop and soul singles -- she was unquestionably the most influential female vocalist of her generation (Streisand notwithstanding), and the most significant black women vocalist to emerge since Billie Holiday. It was representative of her influence and popularity at the time, that Franklin could indeed break from the conventions of her "Muscle Shoals in New York" style and record a live two-disc Gospel recording.
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