Greatest soul star of her age set a new standard for vocal brilliance
Aretha Franklin was the voice that set pop free. She was the greatest soul singer of her age and any other. When she hit her stride in the late Sixties, the honey tone, extemporaneous flow and emotional power of her vocals manifested a new spirit abroad in the era. She was young, gifted and black.
She was a do-right woman. She demanded R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Between 1967 and 1968, Aretha scored 10 US top-10 hits in a row. She sang her songs of freedom with a brio, joy, conviction and breathtaking technical command that raised the vocal bar, casting an inescapable influence over every female pop singer in her wake.
It is the joy that ultimately defines her music. This was a new model of womanhood in popular culture, operating at the highest artistic level, free to be herself, beholden to no man, taking such obvious pleasure in her own supreme gifts.
Over the next 50 years, Aretha’s commercial career would have ups and downs. But such was her impact on popular music, and so considerable her abilities, she would never lose her lustre. In 2008, at 66, Rolling Stone magazine was still hailing her as the Greatest Singer of All Time. When record producer John Hammond signed her to Columbia in 1960, aged 18, he called her “an untutored genius, the best natural singer since Billie Holiday”. In her late Sixties and Seventies pomp, she unleashed her gospel passion and jazzy scatting on cutting-edge electric soul. LPS I Never Loved A Man the Way I Love You (1967), Lady Soul (1968), Spirit in the Dark (1970), Young, Gifted & Black (1972) and live gospel album, Amazing Grace (1972) are essential listening. Pop is nothing if not fickle though. By the end of the Seventies, Aretha’s star was not so much dwindling as about to collapse and implode when Clive Davis took her under his wing, hauling her out of the restaurant cabaret circuit where she had been reduced to entertaining holiday diners in Lake Tahoe. Her 1985 million-seller Who’s Zoomin’ Who demonstrated that her prodigious vocal talents could invest human warmth into even the slickest R’N’B production, although it is hard not to feel her talents were being squandered.
As she became dogged by health problems in her later years, Aretha’s ventures into the studio became rarer. She seldom performed live after 2010, and a misguided final studio album in 2014 (Aretha Franklin Sings The Diva Classics) is best avoided.
Age catches up with us all. Eventually even the greatest voices must fall silent. But as we bid farewell, we should be thankful for those recordings that fix her in time among the most magical talents of our age. To remember Aretha, spin Lady Soul and stand back in amazement as she does her thing with an incredible band (Bobby Womack and Eric Clapton feature on guitar) performing lovingly curated material, some written by Franklin herself.
I was lucky enough to witness Aretha perform in full gospel flow. It was at a charity event staged by VH1 in New York in 1998, on a bill that included Celine Dion, Mariah Carey,
‘We should be thankful for those recordings that fix her in time among the most magical talents of our age’
Gloria Estefan and Shania Twain. Her presence alone was monumental, bringing all her fantastic history to the stage with a sense of imperious entitlement. As the show drew to a close, the leading ladies gathered together (with special guest Carole King) to sing Natural Woman, each taking a verse. But with wicked one up woman ship, Aretha shadowed their vocals. When Shania delivered lines low and sultry, Aretha’s voice delved down deeper and bluesier. When Celine hit those soaring high notes, Aretha headed for the stars. At the climax of the song, as her fellow performers were already taking their bows, Aretha led her band into a spontaneous and unrehearsed gospel jam. Swaying about the stage with transparent pleasure, she began to testify for all she was worth, hollering, whispering, swooping and yelling through the full range of her vocal pyrotechnics. A quintet of the most famous women in popular music were reduced to glorified backing singers, fixed grins on their faces. The concert was billed as Divas Live but in the end there was only one diva left, basking in deserved adulation.