Aretha Franklin was more than ‘Queen of Soul’
The trouble with an honorific nickname as deserving as the “Queen of Soul” is that at a certain point, it starts to feel more like a nickname than an honor — a shortcut to acknowledging the genius of Aretha Franklin without necessarily having to reflect on what it
was that made it such a perfect fit.
Franklin — who died at 9:50 a.m. Thursday, surrounded by family at home in Detroit — was still in the process of earning that distinction when Chicago DJ Pervis Spann placed an actual crown on Franklin’s head and anointed her as such on the stage of the aptly titled Regal Theatre — a bit of showmanship to entertain the crowd.
The star was in her 20s at the time, riding high on the recent release of “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You.”
The first of several masterpieces on Atlantic Records after six years on Columbia without a proper calling card, her 1967 breakthrough would go on to be proclaimed the best soul album ever by the editors of
It would be hard to argue with that ranking.
The spiritual fervor and passion she brings to professing her feeling for the no-good heartbreaker of the title track earned Franklin her first No.1 on
R&B chart. As deeply moving as that melancholy ballad is, the fire with which she transforms Otis Redding’s “Respect” from a disgruntled lover’s complaint to a hard-hitting feminist anthem is beyond transcendent, a signature song for the ages that topped the pop and R&B charts.
In Peter Guralnick’s “Sweet Soul Music,” Jerry Wexler, the man who produced nearly all her best work at Atlantic, recalls how Redding told him after hearing Franklin’s version, “I just lost my song. That girl took it away from me.”
That girl could’ve taken anybody’s song away from them.
Such was the power of her voice and vision.
In Gurlanick’s estimation: “There has been no pop singer more inspired than Aretha when it comes to sheer vocal artistry.”
Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic, told the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “She is blessed with an extraordinary combination of remarkable urban sophistication and deep blues feeling . ... The result is maybe the greatest singer of our time.”
There’s no shortage of records that speak to the magnitude of Franklin’s vocal artistry in the 12 years she spent on Atlantic, from that moment in the gospel-flavored “Dr. Feelgood” when she lets her girlfriends know she’s got no time to “sit and chit-chat and smile” when Dr. Feelgood’s in the house through such classic hit singles as “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Chain of Fools” and “Think.”
The hits dried up for Franklin after 1998’s acclaimed “A Rose Is Still a Rose,” a full three decades down the road from the album that made her a star.
But even then, she never lost that vocal artistry, as evidenced in 2015 by the awe-inspiring show of force that was her performance of “(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman” as part of the Kennedy Center Honors salute to Carole King. After strolling on stage in a long fur coat, she takes her seat behind a grand piano — Franklin played on many of her most iconic records — taking a fairly straightforward approach to the opening verse, her phrasing growing more relaxed as she goes.
By the time she drops that coat to the floor as she freestyles her way through the soulful crescendo that follows the bridge, she’s effectively taken her own hit away from the natural woman she was in 1967 and made it her own, as a 73-year-old legend with nothing to prove, who just proved it all over again.