Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (17 page)

“Atlantic was very different than Motown,” said Wexler, “where the record company also managed and booked their acts. We were careful to make sure our artists had outside management, outside advisers, and outside booking agents. Aretha was not an especially trustful person—and with good reason—and it was important for her to have her own counsel. I saw that her relationship with White was rough, to say the least, and I could have tried to influence her to leave him. I could have persuaded her to hire management more sympathetic to Atlantic, but I knew that’d be a mistake. I had to separate church and state. The producer/record exec is one animal. The manager/agent is quite another. Plus, her manager/agent was also her husband.”

According to Aretha’s siblings, White was not only a savvy manager, but someone who recognized her talents as a composer.

“For all you might say about Ted,” said Cecil, “it was Ted who got Aretha to write. That was partly because he had a thriving song-publishing concern and wanted to build up his inventory of copyrights, but it was also because he saw that her talent as a writer rivaled her talent as a singer.”

In 1990, discussing Aretha’s first Atlantic album, Luther Vandross commented first on her writing, not her singing. “I’m not saying that the lady didn’t sing her behind off,” Luther explained. “She did. She turned it out, but what impressed me even more was that she wrote or cowrote the four best songs on the record—‘Don’t Let Me Lose This Dream,’ ‘Baby, Baby, Baby,’ ‘Dr. Feelgood,’ and ‘Save Me.’ As much as I adore Diana Ross and Dionne Warwick, the same can’t be said of them. Beautiful singers, but hardly writers.

“When I produced Aretha in the eighties, the first thing I told her was how much I loved ‘Don’t Let Me Lose This Dream.’ It had this bossa nova–ish silky groove that was pure heaven. I asked her where the song came from. She said she’d been listening to Astrud Gilberto, the girl who sang with Stan Getz, and she wanted to
write something with the feeling of Latin soul. You go from there to ‘Dr. Feelgood,’ which is basically nothing more than a twelve-bar blues. But the lyrics! And her piano playing! It’s like something my mama’s mama listened to—one of those original ladies, like Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey. I believe it’s one of the greatest blues ever written. Same is true of ‘Baby, Baby, Baby’ that she wrote with her sister Carolyn, another major talent. It’s another brilliant blues variation with a line that I wish I had written myself—‘I’m bewildered, I’m lonely, and I’m loveless.’ ”

Aretha wrote about composing “Save Me” with King Curtis. She called him a gentleman because, even though she described the musical contribution by her and Carolyn as minor, King gave them full credit as collaborators. She also sang King’s blistering “Soul Serenade,” another testimony to the great horn man’s pivotal role in helping Aretha become Aretha.

The centerpiece of the first Aretha album is, of course, her cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect.” Wexler told me that he personally played her version for Otis. “He broke out into this wide smile,” Wexler remembered, “and said, ‘The girl has taken that song from me. Ain’t no longer my song. From now on, it belongs to her.’ And then he asked me [to] play it again, and then a third time. The smile never left his face.

“If you listen to Otis’s original and then Aretha’s cover, the first thing you notice is that her groove is more dramatic. That stop-and-stutter syncopation was something she invented. She showed the rhythm section I had shipped up from Alabama—Jimmy Johnson, Tommy Cogbill, and Roger Hawkins—how to do it. I knew she’d been intrigued with the song for a couple of years and had tried it out onstage. She had already come up with this new beat. But the creation of the background vocals and ingenious wordplay was done on the spot in the studio. The backgrounds were more than wonderful aural augmentations. They gave the song a strong sexual flavor. The call for respect went from a request to a demand. And then, given the civil rights and feminist fervor that was building in the sixties, respect—especially as Aretha articulated it with
such force—took on new meaning. ‘Respect’ started off as a soul song and wound up as a kind of national anthem. It virtually defined American culture at that moment in history.”

“The sock-it-to-me line helped shape the song for sure,” said Carolyn. “I had heard the expression on the streets and thought it might work in a call-and-response call with ‘Respect.’ Obviously, Otis wrote the song from a man’s point of view, but when Erma and Aretha and I worked it over, we had to rearrange the perspective. We saw it as something earthier, a woman having no problem discussing her needs. It turned out that it was interpreted in many different ways—having to do with sexual or racial politics. Far as I’m concerned, all those interpretations are correct because everyone needs respect on every level.”

The sock-it-to-me line gained further fame as a running gag on
Laugh-In,
the television comedy show that hit the airwaves the following year. Even Richard Nixon had a cameo in which he weirdly demanded, “Sock it to me.”

Spelling out the title—“R-E-S-P-E-C-T”—and juxtaposing it with the demands “Find out what it means to me” and “take care of TCB” were additional lyrical augmentations. “TCB” echoed Aretha’s own lyrics from “Dr. Feelgood,” in which she proclaimed that “taking care of business is really this man’s game.” In the fade of the song, she also referred to her recent past by singing, “I get tired, keep on trying, runnin’ out of fools and I ain’t lying.” “Runnin’ Out of Fools” was her biggest R&B single on Columbia. By calling out its title, she honored the soul-music tradition of self-referencing previous successes. She also sealed the deal on personalizing the song so that, in its composer’s own words, “it belongs to her.”

“I also heard ‘Respect’ as part of her ongoing fight with Ted,” said Cecil. “He might have respected her talent, but he didn’t respect her as a human being. He was a violent cat whose violence only got worse. I felt like Aretha was singing ‘Respect’ to Ted, but it hardly made any difference. He kept slapping her around and didn’t care who saw him do it.”

In April, in the first cover story on Aretha in a national magazine,
Jet
quoted White about his wife’s success: “We are getting calls from all over the country for her appearances… the European scene is throbbing for her. We have had to cancel a scheduled May European tour until fall because we can’t fit it into the present schedule.” He went on to say that he expected his wife to jump from making a hundred thousand in 1966 to a quarter million in 1967.

“Respect” hit the pop charts on April 29, 1967, a day after Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight-champion title for refusing to be drafted into the United States Army. It would go to number one on both the R&B and pop charts and become the song that would both define and forever change Aretha’s career. As a result of it, a few months later at the start of her show at Chicago’s Regal Theater, she would be crowned Queen of Soul by DJ Pervis “the Blues Man” Spann. Aretha took the ceremony seriously, noting the beauty of the “bejeweled crown” placed on her head, where it would remain, metaphorically, for the next five decades.

There was Bessie, there was Dinah, and now there was Aretha.

Her dream was coming true—the fairy-tale dream of a little girl whose father had promised her the moon. The dream, though, was rooted in a storybook sensibility where everyone lives happily ever after. Aretha bought into that fairy tale as a child and clung to that fairy tale despite harsh reality. In 1967, the year of her dazzling breakthrough, she was in the throes of emotional chaos. Even though it was her husband/manager who was controlling a career that, in a matter of a few months, had taken off like a rocket, her marriage had officially become a misery.

T
he blues is a motherfucker,” said Carmen McRae, “and not everyone can sing ’em. It’s more than chops. You have to live ’em. If you ask me, Billie Holiday’s greatest album was
Lady in Satin,
done just before she died. Her voice was rough around the edges, but her blues were deepest. In Aretha’s case, her greatest album is that first one on Atlantic, when her voice was the strongest, but, from what I heard, her blues was also the deepest.”

“America had the blues,” said Jerry Wexler, “and Aretha’s blues reflected that. Antigovernment feeling was fermenting. The civil rights movement was fermenting. The bullshit Vietnam War was building. But this was a different kind of blues. It was blues with an attitude—a black attitude. In the first part of the sixties, Motown reflected less militant middle-class desires. Motown was beautiful, but Motown, at least in its early configurations, was mild. Aretha was anything but mild. Her voice carried the assertiveness of a new class of not only blacks no longer content to get-along-and-go-along but also young whites whose discontent with the status quo was deep. The seeds of the soul revolution had been planted by artists like Ray Charles and Solomon Burke and Sam and Dave. But it didn’t come to full fruition until Aretha. Aretha’s ‘Respect’ happened
in 1967. James Brown’s ‘Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud),’ great as it was, didn’t come along till 1968.”

“Funny,” Ray Charles told me, “but the first Aretha song I remember loving wasn’t ‘Respect’ or any of those first hits, but Sam Cooke’s ‘Change Is Gonna Come.’ I thought that was the one that explained who she was and how she was changing up the shit. When I heard that, I realized Aretha was my one and only true soul sista.”

She also proved to be a devoted sister: she took time from her hectic schedule to attend the wedding of her brother Cecil to his bride, Earline, on April 30 at the New Bethel Baptist Church with Reverend C. L. Franklin presiding. Two thousand people were in attendance.

“Aretha could not have been sweeter,” Earline told me. “She even helped design my dress. At the beginning, my sister-in-law gave me every indication that I’d be a welcome member of her family. She was loving and supportive, at least for the first two or three years. But as her personal life began to unravel, so did our relationship. As much as she loved and came to depend upon Cecil, that’s as much as she’d come to resent and distance herself from me.”

In the spring of 1967, Aretha was moving at a frenetic pace. The demand for her concerts shot up overnight. Her performance fees quadrupled.

“Ted was eager to make money,” said Cecil. “His attitude was that he’d been hanging tough, waiting for this very moment—and he wasn’t about to be denied. So, using Ruth Bowen, he was booking her everywhere he could. It was especially crazy because both Ted and Aretha were drinking more than usual. Neither of them did well when they were high on liquor. It brought out the worst in them.”

“I had booked Erma and Carolyn before Aretha came to me to officially ask me to become her agent,” said Ruth Bowen. “The timing was perfect. I was there for the birth of a star and happy to
help her and Ted. I liked Ted. He was smart, well spoken, and hardworking. He agreed with Aretha that I was the right agent to figure out how to maximize her earnings. I could book her into bigger and more prestigious venues. The days of the Village Vanguard and Village Gate were over.

“One of the first big gigs I got her was at a nightclub Gene Chandler was opening in Chicago. I went out there to make sure everything went like clockwork. It didn’t. Aretha came out looking grand, but when she sat down, the piano stool collapsed. She landed on her rear. But being the complete professional, she made a joke of it, got back up, and played standing up until a sturdier stool was brought. I wanted to kill Gene. This was my first date for my new client and he couldn’t even provide a decent seat! I was sure she’d never work with me again. But I have to say that she was very understanding. She went on to give a stirring performance and thanked me for what was a big payday.

“What I didn’t realize when I started working with Aretha, though, was that she was not only a heavy smoker but a heavy drinker. She had a habit of getting loaded before a performance. In no way did that help her singing. When it comes to singing, Aretha needs no help of any kind. Everyone knows that she possesses natural genius. But she’d been using booze to numb the pain of her lousy marriage. It had become a crutch. That’s the word I used—a
crutch
—when I mentioned the problem. From day one I was honest with her. I also told her that she wasn’t doing herself any favors by smoking like a chimney—she was up to three packs a day. She said that smoking and drinking calmed her nerves. I said that was bull. Liquor didn’t calm her nerves at all. Liquor was just making her sloppy. I told her that in plain English. She didn’t like hearing it. Well, that was tough because I had raised her rate from about seven hundred fifty dollars a performance to five thousand and, before long, ten thousand.

“Now, I wasn’t in Columbus, Georgia, for the next incident. That’s when she fell off the stage and broke her arm. She said it was because the stage lights had blinded her. Maybe so. Her assistant
told me it was because she was tipsy. Whatever it was, I hoped she had learned her lesson. Unfortunately, she hadn’t.”

The May 18, 1967, edition of
Jet
has a photo of Aretha at the Ford Hospital in Detroit, her arm in a cast. The story states that the break required surgery.

By June 20, she was back in the Atlantic studios.

“That first album put us on a roll,” said Wexler. “Everything in me said,
Keep rolling, keep recording, keep the hits coming.
She was red hot and I had no reason to believe that the streak wouldn’t continue. I knew that it would be foolish—and even irresponsible—not to strike when the iron was hot. I also had personal motivation. A Wall Street financier had agreed to see what we could get for Atlantic Records. While Ahmet and Nesuhi had not agreed on a selling price, they had gone along with my plan to let the financier test our worth on the open market. I was always eager to pump out hits, but at this moment I was on overdrive. In this instance, I had a good partner in Ted White, who felt the same. He wanted as much product out there as possible.

“The news that Aretha had been injured in concert was alarming, but Ted reassured me that she’d soon be back in the studio. She didn’t show up for the first few dates. That turned out to be standard operating procedure for Aretha. I didn’t ask why. She wasn’t the first emotionally fragile artist I’d worked with and she wouldn’t be the last. I saw my job as making her as comfortable as possible. I knew that once she did show up, it’d be more than worth the wait.

“Turned out the reason she was a no-show, though, didn’t have to do with her injury. She wouldn’t tell me directly—direct address is not Aretha’s style—but I finally got it out of Ted. Aretha was pissed at me over the fact that her sister Erma had gotten a deal. She thought I had set it up. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Erma told me the backstory. “I was still living in New York,” she said, “and no longer singing with Lloyd Price. After five years I hadn’t gotten a single raise and decided I had had enough. I was grateful for the music I’d made for Epic, but the songs, as good as
they were, never charted. I found work at IBM and was quite content. It wasn’t that I had given up singing—singing would always be my passion—but practicality required that I go to work. I was also happy to help Aretha on those first sessions. Then came ‘Respect.’ Well, that opened the floodgates. Aretha had given the Franklin name a new shine. I got several calls from producers. The most interesting was from Bert Berns, who said he had once been partners with Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun. He said he had his own label, Shout, and that he had written ‘Twist and Shout,’ a hit for the Isley Brothers and the Beatles. Now he had written another song he thought would be even bigger. He and a gentleman named Jerry Ragovoy had composed ‘Piece of My Heart’ and did I want to hear it? I did. I liked it, although I thought the calypso beat was wrong for my style. At the recording session, they let me change it into a soul groove. Everyone thought the result was great, including me. Bert was so excited he immediately signed me to an album deal. We got almost immediate airplay. I was thrilled when it went into the top ten on the R-and-B chart. I’m not sure how Aretha felt about that.”

“I pleaded with Ted to tell Aretha the truth about me and Bert Berns,” said Wexler. “Bert and I had suffered a bad falling-out, even though I had enormous respect for him. After all, he was the guy who brought over guitarist Jimmy Page from England to play on our sessions. Bert, Ahmet, Nesuhi, and I had started a label together—Bang!—where Bert produced Van Morrison’s first album. But Bert also had a penchant for trouble. He courted the wise guys. He wanted total control over every last aspect of our business dealings. Finally it was too much, and the Erteguns and I let him go. He sued us for breach of contract and suddenly we were enemies. I felt that he signed Erma, an excellent singer, not merely for her talent but as a way to get back at me. If I could make a hit with Aretha, he’d show me up by making an even bigger hit on Erma. Because there was always an undercurrent of rivalry between the sisters, this only added to the tension.”

Aretha saw history repeating itself. She still believed that John
Hammond had gone behind her back to sign Erma at Columbia. Now Wexler was doing the same, using Bert Berns as his proxy.

“I don’t know if Ted White was able to set her straight on the story,” said Wexler, “but she finally did show. There was a chill in the air. Even though we were ‘Jerry’ and ‘Aretha’ after the first album, she reverted to calling me ‘Mr. Wexler,’ and I had to go back to calling her ‘Miss Franklin.’ She was also still having mobility problems with her elbow. Yet when she sat down at the piano, she elbowed her way into the deepest grooves imaginable. I remember thinking,
Man, when Aretha arrives, all superfluous problems disappear.
That’s when I knew we had to call this second album
Aretha Arrives.
”

On four of the songs on that album, Aretha employed her sisters, Erma and Carolyn, on background vocals. They can be heard most effectively on the album’s big hit, “Baby, I Love You,” by Ronnie Shannon, the writer of “I Never Loved a Man.”

“But sometime while we were making that record, Aretha’s mood turned,” said Carolyn. “She didn’t like the idea of Erma working with Bert Berns and me going out on my own. That’s when she took up Jerry Wexler’s decision to use the Sweet Inspirations.”

Cissy Houston, head Inspiration, had already sung on two of the songs on
I Never Loved a Man.
She and Aretha shared a church background. The other Inspirations—Estelle Brown, Sylvia Shemwell, and Myrna Smith—were equally adept at creating close harmonies in the gritty gospel mode. Wexler called them “one of the pillars of the Atlantic Church of Sixties Soul.” They proved solid replacements for Aretha’s sisters and in the future would become a semipermanent part of Aretha’s studio sound.

Key players from Muscle Shoals—Spooner Oldham, Tommy Cogbill, and Roger Hawkins—were brought back in. From Atlanta, Wexler also recruited Joe South, the great guitarist/composer.

“When I saw Aretha in that studio in New York City,” South told me, “I was awestruck. I’d heard the first record she’d done and considered her a goddamn saint. I’d written ‘Hush’ that became a
hit for Deep Purple but I hadn’t yet written ‘Games People Play’ and I wasn’t all that confident. I’d always felt that soul music was my heart, but hell, this was the big time. Besides, I was white and I was about to play behind the blackest genius since Ray Charles. ‘It ain’t about color,’ said Wex. ‘Aretha’s color-blind. She’s already gotten a taste of how funky those Muscle Shoals boys can be. She’ll love you.’ Well, Wex was right. She did. I remember standing there while she was singing that old blues ‘Going Down Slow,’ the one that had been done by everyone from Guitar Slim to B.B. King. I mean, she was wailing in a way where I had goose bumps. She nodded at me to play a couple of licks. I gave it all I had and suddenly she smiled. The woman smiled! Brother, that smile has carried me through life. That smile was the only validation I needed to let me know that I belonged in the same room as her. Aretha Franklin smiled!”

Wexler invited critic Nat Hentoff to the sessions. In his liner notes Hentoff wrote, “She still didn’t have complete mobility with her elbow but nonetheless, in several of the slow numbers, she provided bedrock accompaniment on the piano. For the faster numbers, she couldn’t play with her right hand, but on ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ undaunted, she used only her left, and the resultant rhythmic drive is a witness to the extent of spirit within her.”

When I spoke with Hentoff some thirty years after the session, his memory of it was still vivid. “You have to put it in context,” he said. “This was the late sixties, when free jazz was dominating the New York scene. I was hungry for something more accessible. I was eager for sound that reaffirmed the roots of the music I loved best. I saw Aretha as the living embodiment of that reaffirmation. Like most jazz critics, I had a prejudice against pop songs and pop sensibilities. But Aretha broke down that prejudice. Her songs had great pop appeal. In fact, she became one of the dominant pop artists of our time. But in doing so, she never compromised an iota of her authenticity as an artist schooled in the deepest and most creative tradition of blues, gospel, and jazz.”

At the same session, she covered “It Was You,” a James Brown
song from the late fifties. “Aretha wanted to release it as the first single,” said Wexler. “She sang it beautifully but I thought the chart was a little stiff. So we held it back, along with a strong Van McCoy song, ‘So Soon.’ Listening to it years later, I can’t believe it was not released back then. But there was so much great Aretha product and she was cutting it so fast and furiously that, at any given moment, we really had more than we could use. For years to come we’d put out two Aretha albums a year but had enough material to put out even more. Sales-wise, we were doing fabulously.”