No r-e-s-p-e-c-t
Why Aretha re reignitedted a decades-longes-long d disputeute
A week and a half ago, the Queen of Soul reignited one of music’s oldest feuds.
Speaking about her longtime rival Dionne Warwick in an interview with the Associated Press, Aretha Franklin said, “She blatantly lied on me . . . fully well knowing what she was doing.” The Grammy winner was talking about a perceived slight that took place five years ago at the funeral of singer Whitney Houston, where Warwick had told the crowd of mourners, “[Franklin’s] not here, but she is here. She loves Whitney as if she was born to her. She is her godmother.”
While the intent seemed harmless, Franklin found the inaccurate statement “libelous.”
“We’ve never been friends,” she added, “and I don’t think that Dionne has ever liked me.”
It was just the latest salvo in a feud that dates back five decades and has included plenty of sly digs and back-stabbing. And it’s largely one-sided.
“A great deal of what is taking place is just jealousy” on Franklin’s part, according to a longtime music-industry figure who knows both players. “It’s all about Aretha.”
The rivalry started in the 1960s, when both singers were enjoying initial successes on the Billboard charts. Franklin, the piano-playing powerhouse, was part of the R&B revolution, anchoring such gritty, sexy classics as “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)” and “Chain of Fools.” Warwick shined as the muse of pop-songwriting giant Burt Bacharach, delivering delicate hits “Walk On By” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose.”
According to people close to the matter, Franklin decided to let Warwick know just who was the alpha queen by covering Warwick’s 1967 hit “I Say a Little Prayer.” For an extra little dig, her backup singers included Cissy Houston, Warwick’s own aunt. The rollickingly soulful revamp, released a year after Warwick’s feathery take, became a top-10 smash on the pop and R&B charts.
Adding insult to injury, Bacharach — who had written “I Say a Little Prayer” expressly for Warwick — publicly said that Franklin’s version was “much better than the cut I did with Dionne.”
But Warwick is far from the only female vocalist to be snubbed by Franklin. The Queen of Soul has had alleged run-ins with Patti LaBelle, Diana Ross, Roberta Flack, Natalie Cole and Gladys Knight — who said Franklin once ignored her backstage at the Grammys, walking past Knight as if she didn’t exist.
“Aretha’s always had problems with her female contemporaries,” her sister Erma Franklin told David Ritz, author of “Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin,” a 2014 biography. “Her fantasy is to eliminate the competition.”
According to Warwick’s spokesperson, Angelo Ellerbee, that alleged beef is one-sided: “Dionne has always spoken favorably about this lady.”
By the late 1970s, the hits had dried up for Franklin. Enter music mogul Clive Davis, the man who had guided the careers of Janis Joplin and Carly Simon. In 1982, he signed Franklin to his Arista Records and engineered a big comeback with her 1985 platinum album “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?” There was just one problem. Her nemesis Dionne Warwick was also on Arista.
“The [lingering] tension has something to do with the fact that Clive had [signed] both artists,” said magazine publisher Cynthia Horner, who has known Franklin since 1977. “Aretha became his favorite, but Dionne was still connected to Clive.”
But there was a bigger threat on the horizon: Davis’ new signing, Whitney Houston. She was 21 years younger than Franklin, had a killer falsetto and was gorgeous to boot. The label head was so excited about this new talent he was willing to throw his power and attention behind her 1985 debut album.
All this would have stoked Franklin’s jealousy on its own. But added to the mix was the fact that Whitney was Warwick’s first cousin.
Davis, ever the savvy businessman, dreamed up a duet between the icon and the young upstart. Franklin did it, but couldn’t resist putting Houston in her place.
“She said that Whitney lacked her wisdom and maturity as a recording artist, but I just think Aretha was nervous about being outsung by someone from the next generation,” Franklin’s late agent Ruth Bowen once said.
Decades later, Franklin is at it again. While she told AP that she initially avoided making a big deal out of Warwick’s comments out of respect for Houston, she still managed to drop this nugget: “There [had] been so much going on around [Houston] . . . around the drugs, around her and Bobby [Brown] supposed to be fighting . . . I didn’t want to be a part of that.”
The music-industry insider said there’s more to it than that.
“If Aretha was at the funeral, there would have been no limelight on her. And that’s the problem. Aretha doesn’t want to be forgotten.”