Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (30 page)

In addition to her hits, she covered the pop standard “With a Song in My Heart,” Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love” and the Staples’ “Respect Yourself,” with her pitch-perfect imitation of Mavis. Accompanying herself on piano, she sang “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

“She always seems to soar on arrangements with a call-and-response structure,” wrote the reviewer, “where she can weave her voice up, around and through a simple but strong rhythmic line.”

In early September, she returned to Manhattan. There, according to one press report, “the soulful singer” was “redecorating her home and putting together some material for a television special that will feature the high points of her career.” That special never happened.

For all the enthusiastic reviews of her live performances, her recorded performances were not selling.

“When
You
came out in October,” said Wexler, “we were deeply concerned. Aretha was certain that the song she’d written—‘Mr. D.J.’—would be a smash. I had my doubts but we released it as a single anyway. Today no one can remember the song. No one can remember any of the material from
You.
”

“I was called in to do the arrangements,” Gene Page told me, “because Aretha thought well of the charts I had done for Barry White. Those are the kinds of orchestrations she was looking for. Of course Aretha sang heavenly. And of course I loved being in the studio with her. But I’m not sure the songs she chose were up to her usual level. I remember a tune by Van McCoy that we cut, ‘Walk Softly,’ and a beautiful one by her sister Carolyn, ‘As Long As You Are There,’ but that was about it. Nothing hit, and, though I cherish my time with the Queen, the sessions were tense. She and Jerry Wexler seemed at odds. They both knew they needed a hit, but the hits just weren’t there.”

The album’s cover shot showed Aretha in a summery two-piece outfit of sunshine yellow—lots of leg and a slim midriff.

“The look was fine,” said Wexler. “But the music wasn’t. We knew that her franchise was in trouble. People were saying that she had had a fabulous run, and the run was over. There was reason to believe that. For a pop star to have a run that lasts nearly a decade is nothing to sneeze at. But I knew Aretha was more than just a pop star. Neither she nor I was about to call it quits. We were not going to stop trying to find new musical combinations.

“The problem was that the cultural climate was changing. The first rumblings of disco were being felt. That’s why we called in Gene Page. His Barry White arrangements contained the seeds of the disco era. Aretha always dismissed disco, but I think her song ‘Mr. D.J.’ definitely had a pre-disco consciousness. Aretha is always conscious of the marketplace. Aretha always wants to adapt. But after
Hey Now Hey
,
Let Me in Your Life
,
With Everything I Feel in Me
, and
You
, the string of lousy-selling albums was getting long. We needed help, and, quite frankly, we didn’t know where that help would come from.”

“We loved Jerry Wexler,” said Cecil. “For a long time he and Tommy Dowd and Arif Mardin were the right team for Aretha. Their work together will probably live forever. But all good things come to an end, and more and more it looked like Wexler’s day as her producer was over. Wasn’t anything personal, but purely practical. The hits had stopped. We had to look around and say, ‘Who has the hits?’ ”

After
You
, Aretha decided that the answer was definitely not Wexler. He never produced her again.

During the winter of 1975, she made another major move—she moved to Southern California. Both she and Ken Cunningham had been courting the film community for years. She was certain that living in the Los Angeles area would help their cause.

“She had been planning the move for some time,” said Cecil, “and urged me to move as well. But I never did. I didn’t want to leave Detroit. Earline and I flew out every few weeks. That went on for years.”

“I also lived in her house in Encino on Louise Avenue to help with Kecalf,” said cousin Brenda. “It was a beautiful suburban home just around the corner from the Jacksons.”

One of the reasons she chose the neighborhood was her hope that her boys and the Jackson brothers could become friends. That never quite happened.

“She thought the transition from heavily urban New York City to the suburbs of the peaceful San Fernando Valley would do her a world of good,” said Erma. “I didn’t discourage her. I knew that New York was wearing my sister out. After all, she’d fallen apart in New York a couple of times. She’d become an expert at putting herself back together, so why not try kicked-back California? Why not live an easier life?”

By year’s end, Aretha seemed to be in a more comfortable setting.

Her last performance of 1975 had her singing “Auld Lang Syne” with the Guy Lombardo Orchestra, long thought to be the squarest of all pop musical aggregations. Her rendition brings to mind
something James Cleveland said about Aretha: “The girl could sing the Yellow Pages and make you weep.”

Her singing, of course, was never in question. The big question in her professional life was whether she could climb back onto the charts. On the personal front, the issue was whether she could preserve her emotional equilibrium, sustain a romantic relationship with a man, and maintain a household where her four sons all lived under one roof.

In short, could she hold it all together?

M
y job,” said Ruth Bowen, “was to let the world know that Aretha had found domestic bliss in California and was ready to get into the movies.”

Ruth did her job well. On February 26, 1976,
Jet
quoted Aretha explaining that she had moved to Southern California because she considered it the center of show business. She spoke about her plans to star in both an upcoming TV special and a major motion picture. She also mentioned one of her sons: “Clarence is ready to record on his own. He writes as well as sings and plays, and we’re looking for a record company that will sign him.” There was a brief discussion of her fondness for golf, deep-sea fishing, and tennis. The article included a picture of Ken and Aretha on the tennis court.

The problem of finding a hit record remained. The hit did come, but its origins go back to before Aretha’s move to California. According to Carolyn Franklin, the hit was originally designated for her. The hit’s creator, Curtis Mayfield, had known the Franklin family for years.

“We loved Curtis when he was with the Impressions, and we loved him when he went solo,” Carolyn told me. “Not only was he a fabulous singer, he possessed genius as a songwriter. ‘People Get
Ready,’ ‘Keep On Pushing,’ ‘Gypsy Woman’—the list goes on forever. So much positive energy. Then came
Superfly,
one of the greatest movie scores ever. So when Curtis and I ran into each other in Chicago and he mentioned another score he was working on for a film about three sisters who start out in church and wind up singing R-and-B, naturally I thought of Aretha, Erma, and myself. I was intrigued. When Curtis played me some of the songs, I was completely knocked out. He also said that, in addition to writing the soundtrack, he was producing an album in his own studio. He thought two of the actresses, Irene Cara and Lonette McKee, were excellent singers for the movie but wanted a more experienced R-and-B vocalist to cut the album. Was I interested?

“Was I! It had been a couple of years since
I’d Rather Be Lonely
, my last album for RCA, and I was eager to start another project. With some help, I’d pretty much been writing and arranging my own material. By then I considered myself a full-fledged producer. But I was more than willing to give up that role for the chance of being produced by Curtis. The songs were not only sensational but, taken together, told a story I could relate to—the hopes, aspirations and heartaches of sisters who saw singing as a way to make it in the world. It was just perfect. I remember thinking that it was too good to be true. And on that score, I was right.”

“Things got very complicated,” said Ruth Bowen. “Cecil and I had a meeting with Ahmet Ertegun. Wexler was an Atlantic owner, but Ahmet was the big boss. We wanted to let him know that, although Wexler had been great, Aretha wanted to cast around for another producer. Could he give us some names? On the list was Curtis Mayfield. Well, I had booked Curtis for years, knew him well, and loved him like a brother. I knew he’d be thrilled to work with Aretha and vice versa. What I didn’t know, though, was that he’d been talking to Carolyn.”

“We also didn’t know about the movie project,” added Cecil. “When Curtis’s name came up, we all broke into smiles—especially Ree. I called him and mentioned the possibility. I figured he’d be
overjoyed. ‘Oh, wow, Cecil, I’ve got a great project but I’ve promised it to Carolyn.’ When I asked about the project, he mentioned
Sparkle.
That’s the first I heard of it. I knew we had trouble.”

“There shouldn’t have been any problems,” said Erma. “Aretha should have left it alone. She should have let Carolyn sing those
Sparkle
songs and then, afterwards, do her own record with Curtis. But somehow Aretha got a copy of the songs. They were so good that she felt she had to sing them.”

“I was watching all this from the sidelines,” said Wexler. “I had been benched, and, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t all that surprised. At that point there were many more producers hotter than me. An artist has the right to pick any producer he or she wants. I admired Mayfield’s work. And Mayfield, like everyone in the civilized world, admired Aretha. That’s why he sent her the songs. He wanted hits, and no matter what he might have said to Carolyn, once he knew that Aretha was in the mix, she was his first choice. He’d be crazy if she weren’t.”

“It got a little nasty between the sisters,” said Cecil. “The verbal catfights were intense. Carolyn didn’t want to let go, but Aretha wanted those songs. When Ree wants something, watch out! She asked me to settle the matter—which meant telling Carolyn she was off the project. I couldn’t do that. I loved all my sisters equally. So I turned the matter over to the only man with the authority to resolve the conflict—our father.”

“Daddy didn’t want any part of it,” said Erma, “but had no choice. It was an extremely difficult situation because they both had their arguments. Carolyn’s argument was that she was there first. And that she needed hits a lot more than Aretha. Aretha’s argument was that Curtis preferred her, and, given her long dry spell, she also needed hits. None of us were surprised that Daddy came down on Aretha’s side. He loved all his children—he lavished all of us with attention and care—but Aretha always had her special place. It took Carolyn a long time to get over this. She kept saying that she was being denied her big break. And then when the record broke open for Aretha—the critics loved it, the public loved
it, the world loved it—that made things even more difficult for Carolyn.”

“I was at the Franklin family home when this mess over
Sparkle
came to a head,” said Ruth Bowen. “They were down in the basement, where they were doing a lot of drinking. The Franklins, from C.L. on down, has always been a family of hard drinkers. The drinking emboldened Carolyn, who had already been told by her daddy to drop the subject of Aretha singing these Mayfield songs. She called Aretha a name and Aretha retaliated with an even worse name. That’s when Carolyn grabbed a fireplace poker and threatened Aretha. ‘If you can’t fight me like a sister,’ said Aretha, ‘don’t fight me at all.’ For some reason that sounded funny and broke up the tension. We all laughed, Carolyn regained her reason, and no one got hurt. But for a minute there, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.”

“It’s hard for me to talk about it now,” Carolyn told me. “It’s hard for me to say that Aretha sang those songs better than anyone could have. But I do have to say it because it’s the truth. It’s not that I couldn’t have sung
Sparkle.
It’s not that I might not have had a couple of hits off the album. But even if I had—and God knows I wish I had—I still couldn’t have given what Aretha gave: Aretha gave it her genius.”

Sparkle
sparkles like nothing Aretha has done before or since. There was the tender young jazz-soul prodigy singing the soaring “Skylark” during her Columbia days. There was the feverish perfection of her sensational early records on Atlantic. There was the holy fire of
Amazing Grace
. And then comes
Sparkle,
arguably her most impassioned secular singing. From start to finish, her collaboration with Curtis Mayfield is a triumph of kindred spirits.

The stars are perfectly aligned. The songs are perfectly suited to Aretha’s sure sense of storytelling. For the first time in her Atlantic career, she turns out a cohesive work. When she worked with Quincy Jones and the latter-day Wexler, her albums were a grab
bag of originals and covers.
Sparkle
is a tightly woven tapestry, a long-form concept album tied to a cinematic narrative that lends it a flow and feeling all its own.

Aretha absorbs Mayfield’s aesthetic with joyful ease. “ ‘I sparkle,’ ” she sings in the first line of the first song. “ ‘Loving the way I do… I feel so good.’ ” The story is all about good feeling. The mood is irresistibly upbeat, informed by what Aretha called Curtis’s “sweet funk.” Like Marvin Gaye, Mayfield possessed an extraordinary ability to mix sugar and spice in just the right measures. Also like Marvin, Mayfield was a subtle groove-meister. In the suite of songs that make up
Sparkle,
the rhythms are sequenced seamlessly.

Lush orchestrations—replete with strings, flutes, and harps—had been the hallmark of Isaac Hayes. His
Shaft
was a masterpiece. Working in a similar style, Marvin and Mayfield created masterpieces of their own—Gaye’s
What’s Going On
and
Trouble Man,
and Curtis’s
Superfly. Sparkle
carries on the tradition. Here, though, the central character is neither a gangster nor a damsel threatened by a menacing world but instead a young woman in love with life. She floats on a cloud of aspirational energy. The mood is one of hope and promise.

“People said that Aretha was singing about being in love with Ken Cunningham,” said Ruth Bowen, “but I don’t agree. She wasn’t singing about being in love with a man. She was singing about being in love with these songs. She knew that Curtis had written some of his greatest work, and she was riding those melodies all the way to the moon. When I showed up in Chicago at Curtom Studios, where the record was being cut, I couldn’t believe my ears. I never thought Aretha could outdo ‘Respect’ or ‘Natural Woman.’ But, believe me, this singing was on a whole different level. Girlfriend was shouting. She was going for broke. After being lost in the woods for a couple of years, she found her way out. And Curtis Mayfield, one of the smoothest gentlemen in the funk business, was leading the way.”

“It was perfectly harmonious in the studio,” said Cecil. “Curtis
may be mild-mannered but he’s strong. These were his songs and arrangements and he knew how he wanted them sung. At Columbia and early at Atlantic, Aretha responded well to direction. But at this point, with so many hits under her belt, she was more assertive. When it came to ‘Something He Can Feel’—the first single—they argued over how she riffed over the vamp at the end of the song. He wanted even more emotion than Ree was giving. She thought she had it nailed in a couple of takes. But somehow, in his gentle way, he got at least a half dozen more takes out of her. When the song shot to number one and stayed there for a month, he proved his case.”

“Humility isn’t my strong suit,” said Jerry Wexler. “But when Mayfield sent us the masters, I had nothing to say but ‘Bravo!’ I realized that Aretha was back. Their rapport was evident. ‘Hooked on Your Love’ and ‘Look into Your Heart’ contain some of Aretha’s most subtle singing. She’s inspired. I couldn’t have provided that inspiration. Only a peer like Curtis could have done that.”

“I was happy and heartbroken at the same time,” said Carolyn. “The same year that
Sparkle
came out, I released my last RCA album,
If You Want Me.
It had several good songs and I thought my performances were fine. But nothing hit. At that moment—the same moment that
Sparkle
had revived Aretha’s career—I knew that my own recording career was over. Confirmation came when RCA dropped me.”

“Carolyn was disappointed and had every right to be,” said Cecil. “A deep freeze set in between her and Aretha. But I knew that, given enough time, the wounds would heal. My sisters fought tooth and nail, but the bad blood never lasted.”

“Some singing groups begin together as sisters but end up as adversaries,” said Erma. “Take the Supremes. No one could have been closer than Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Florence Ballard. But their circumstances and conflicting personalities ultimately broke them apart—never to reconcile. When Florence passed away, in 1976, my dad officiated at the funeral at New Bethel. It was one of the saddest days I can remember. So much talent, so
much heartbreak. In the case of us Franklin sisters, though, it’s important to remember that, for all our fighting, we always got back together.
Always.
”

In April, the same month
Sparkle
was recorded,
Jet
had this news for its readers: “Aretha Franklin’s soul mate, Ken Cunningham, is trying to establish himself in a filmmaking career. He recently spent some time in San Francisco scouting locations for a movie,
Asili-Genesis,
for which he wrote the script.” The magazine reported that Aretha had spent a month preparing for the role but that plans had been postponed due to a strike by West Coast film technicians.

That summer of America’s bicentennial saw
Sparkle
’s release. The critics applauded it, the fans loved it, and the first single, “Something He Can Feel,” held down the number-one spot on the R&B charts for nineteen weeks. The question that had been looming—could she still sell records?—had been answered in the affirmative. The other question, of whether she could find harmony at home, was not as easily answered.

“When she asked me to place a puff piece on Cecil,” said Ruth, “I had to wonder why. Cecil was always a behind-the-scenes man. He wasn’t looking for glory. When it came to the press, Aretha’s sole purpose, like most artists’, was to make herself look good. So why all of a sudden an emphasis on Cecil?”

“Maybe Ken had pushed her too far,” said Cecil. “Maybe she wanted to let the world know that she had one manager and one manager only. I didn’t need that confirmation. I always knew I had my sister’s trust, but for some reason she needed the world to know.”

In July,
Jet
called the article “Aretha Franklin’s Hidden Asset: Her Brother Cecil” and said, “Not only does he manage her, but he is also vice president of the four small companies she owns.”

By August, Ken Cunningham was gone.

“I asked Aretha if she was sure that she wanted it in the press,” said Ruth Bowen. “Maybe it was better to keep these matters private.
‘No,’ she said, ‘my fans need to know. Plus I want the world to know that I’m eligible.’ ”

Jet,
August 12, 1976: “Aretha Franklin, Her Soul Mate End Their Love Match: Aretha Franklin and her soul mate, Ken Cunningham, have separated after one of the more durable ‘soul matings’ in show business.”

The magazine reported that Ken was no longer living in her Encino home. It was also noted that at a recent TV-show taping, when Aretha gave her father an Ebony Music Hall of Fame award for his contribution to gospel music, her entire family was onstage—with Cunningham conspicuously absent.