Aretha Franklin (12 page)

Sam Cooke's passing was especially unfortunate in that he died at the peak of his creative popularity. During the years that Aretha had been singing the blues—literally and figuratively—Sam had been enjoying extreme pop and R&B success on the charts. Earlier that year he had a huge hit with his song “Good News,” and his career in the early sixties was one smash after another. When she moved to Atlantic Records in the late sixties, Aretha cut several of Sam's songs in remembrance of their friendship.

Yeah!!!
was released in May 1964. Although the finished product is a wonderfully produced jazz album, it found her back in the “standards” and “show tunes” mode. The cuts on the album included “If I Had a Hammer,” “More,” “Misty,” and “Once in a Lifetime” (from
Stop the World—I Want to Get Off
). Her versions of the jazz classics “Muddy Water” and “Trouble in Mind” sound wonderful in the “live” nightclub atmosphere in which they were recorded. Along with the
Unforgettable
album,
Yeah!!!
is considered a real prize by album collectors. It is a great opportunity to hear Aretha sing jazz without the heavy string arrangements that were ever-present in her studio recordings at the time. Unfortunately,
Yeah!!!
peaked at Number 101 on the LP charts in 1965, when it was released. The disappointing sales figures at that time prove that her return to jazz eradicated the gains in popularity that she had made with
Runnin' Out of Fools
.

During the months that Clyde Otis worked for Columbia Records, he cut dozens of songs with Aretha, but he wasn't happy with the whole situation, nor did he care for Ted White. “The point was simply that I didn't enjoy it. Columbia at that time wasn't really into her kind of music, and they certainly were not into her. During that year, when I was at CBS and cutting those albums, they went through a lot of trauma, she and Ted, and I rescued her so many times—financially—and him even, financially. I was very accommodating on the part of the company, and very receptive to their problems, whatever their needs were. So it became very frustrating for me, and I just walked away from it,” Clyde recalls of his fast exit from Columbia.

It was during this era that Bob Altshuler joined CBS Records as Director of Press and Public Relations. Previously he had worked at Atlantic Records, where Aretha would ultimately find her greatest success. Comparing the two companies at the time, Altshuler remembers the contrast: “At the end of the day, when people were listening to music at
Atlantic Records, they were listening to Otis Redding or Rufus Thomas or Ray Charles. At the end of the day, when people listened to music at Columbia, they would be listening to Doris Day and Ray Conniff and Percy Faith.”

Before Aretha's contract with Columbia lapsed, the company released one more album of her music. After she signed with Atlantic, Columbia released five more Aretha albums (mainly comprised of Clyde Otis productions)
and
two “greatest hits” packages before the decade was over.

Aretha's
Soul Sister
album was released in May 1966, and although the title sounds as if this was to be Aretha's big breakthrough to the R&B market, it was misleading.
Interview
magazine has referred to this album as containing “hints of things to come.”
Soul Sister
comprises what seems a schizophrenic variety of songs. Anyone who was hoping for a follow-up to her youthful
Runnin' Out of Fools
must have been disappointed.
Soul Sister
is a hodgepodge of soul, jazz, and schmaltzy standards. Whatever prompted her to re-record “You Made Me Love You”? Once was enough.

Comparing the version of “You Made Me Love You” that John Hammond recorded with Aretha in 1961 and the rendition Clyde Otis produced in 1965, it is clear that the more recent one takes a much more mature approach to the song. In playing these songs back to back, it is fascinating to see how Aretha's voice had deepened and gained expressive character in four years' time.

“Can't You Just See Me” is as close to a rock & roll beat as Aretha comes on this album; it is indeed a nice preview of coming attractions. And on Ashford & Simpson's “Cry Like a Baby,” Aretha does show off the beginnings of the style of singing that would make her famous at Atlantic.

However, in spite of these fresh selections,
Soul Sister
also contains two show tunes from the heart of Dixie: swinging jazz versions of “Ol' Man River” and “Swanee.” One of the high points on this disc is Aretha's first version of Van McCoy's touching “Sweet Bitter Love.” She also sang McCoy's “Follow Your Heart” on this set, and she would continue to record his songs throughout her career.

Ted White agrees that “the Van McCoy things” were among his favorites of Aretha's recordings with Clyde Otis. “And,” White continues,
“Clyde brought in the Warwick Singers, which Dee Dee was heading up [Dee Dee Warwick is Dionne's sister]. Cissy [Houston] was in the group also, and Myrna [Smith]. And there were a lot of good things that came out of that contract with Clyde,” he admits in retrospect.

Cissy Houston and Myrna Smith later formed their own group, called the Sweet Inspirations. They ended up working with Aretha at Atlantic Records, and she became very close friends with Cissy.

The most touching song on
Soul Sister
was the Clyde Otis composition “Take a Look.” The lyrics of the song are meant as a message aimed at fellow black Americans. “I felt that to a large degree, many blacks were not pushing themselves,” Otis explains. “They were standing around, waiting for somebody to pay them a debt that could not be paid. That's how the whole concept of the song came about. I had established a foundation for the song. If you look at the first four lines, it tells you what the philosophy of this foundation was. Self-help, I think, is the key to success, and self-analyzation. I feel that America is the greatest melting pot for success of any place on the face of the Earth. You can accomplish it here, if you are willing to work.”

The single of “Can't You Just See Me” was released in January 1966, and made it to Number Ninety-six on the pop charts.
Soul Sister
was released in August of that year, and its peak chart position was Number 132. There seemed to be total confusion as to what category to put Aretha Franklin in. Originally she had been marketed as a straight jazz singer, then she was shifted to pop tunes, and just when that started to happen, she went back to jazz. From that point forward, she was all over the board—soul, jazz, rock, standards, ragtime, blues, ballads, and everything in-between.

During this same period, Aretha scored two Top Forty hits on the R&B charts. In 1965 a song called “One Step Ahead” was released and made it to Number Eighteen; and in 1966 “Cry Like a Baby” peaked at Number Twenty-seven.

Aretha's contract with Columbia Records lapsed in the second half of 1966, and the company began recycling everything that was left “in the can.”
Take It Like You Give It
(1967) was the last Columbia album of Aretha's that was made up in its entirety of previously unreleased material. Eight of the cuts on it were produced by Clyde Otis, two by Bob Johnson, one by Bobby Scott, and one song was left over from her sessions with
Robert Mersey. The Mersey cut was a Ted White composition called “Lee Cross,” which was released as a single in 1967.

The strongest cuts on the album are the ballads: the lush “Her Little Heart Went to Loveland,” and the sentimental and bluesy “Only the One You Love,” and Aretha's own composition, the beautiful violin-laden “Land of My Dreams.” Most of the up-tempo material is dreadful by comparison. “A Little Bit of Soul” is style without substance and “Tighten Up Your Tie, Button Up Your Jacket (Make It for the Door)” is just plain silly.

The
Take a Look
LP (1967) combined three previously unreleased album cuts (“Operation Heartbreak,” “Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home,” and “I Won't Cry Anymore,”) with six re-released numbers from every phase of her Columbia career. The recycled material included “Blue Holiday” (1962) through “Lee Cross” (1967). Aretha's success at Atlantic in 1967, 1968, and 1969 was the greatest thing that ever happened to the material she recorded at Columbia. “Take a Look” was released as a single by Columbia in August of 1967, while “Baby I Love You” (Atlantic) was still on the charts, and it made it to Number Fifty-six. It was, however, eclipsed by “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” (Atlantic), which was released only a few weeks later.

In 1969 Columbia released Aretha's
Soft and Beautiful
album, produced by Clyde Otis, which was comprised of 90-percent previously unreleased material. (The one exception was “A Mother's Love” from the
Soul Sister
LP.) These songs were recorded during the era in which Robert Mersey had gone on to produce three consecutive smash albums by Barbra Streisand. On this LP are two of Streisand's 1960s hits, as interpreted by Aretha Franklin: “My Coloring Book” and “People.” The deep-down blues of “Only the Lonely,” and the jazzy despondency of “(Ah, the Apple Trees) When the World Was Young,” make this album well worth listening to. It is the most consistently-paced album of her later Columbia years, and her version of “My Coloring Book” is a little-known gem.

Years after her contract with Columbia lapsed, the company was still pumping out albums by Aretha. Over the years, the company has packaged and repackaged these songs over and over again (see the Discography section). In the 1980s, Columbia released three repackaged retrospectives of classics from this period of her career:
Sweet Bitter Love
(1982),
Aretha
Sings the Blues
(1985), and
After Hours
(1987). Joe McEwen coordinated the album packaging and personally chose the material for the most recent two.

According to McEwen, when he joined CBS Records, he was curious to see what kind of material was in the vaults from Aretha's Columbia years. He remembers being pleasantly surprised. “I felt that they really got a bad rap,” he explains. “Her voice was amazing then, she was really young. And even though a lot of things didn't work then, surprisingly the material does hold up pretty well, especially her piano playing in the quartet stuff. Some of the violin arrangements aren't really as good as she is. There's some awkwardness in the arrangements and just the general approach. They tried a lot of different things, and those things just didn't really work. There were definitely a number of great records that she made here [CBS]. Even though she didn't approach the kind of intense style that really catapulted her at Atlantic, they were a lot better than I think generally they've been given credit for.”

What was it that made Aretha Franklin unique during the early 1960s? In Joe McEwen's opinion, “Her passion, her voice, her vision of reading a song—that's a big thing. Just the way that she would accentuate lines in a song, or the songs that she would do. Often they would be songs that you'd think would be unlikely vehicles for her, yet they became completely convincing in every way. That's what makes anyone a great singer—like Frank Sinatra, or anybody who is convincing, is real, is warm, is tender. All of the elements that go into great styles—
and her voice!
No one has a voice like that!”

Looking back more than twenty years to her days at CBS, Aretha recalls, “On Columbia I cut a lot of good stuff, and I feel that I gained an audience there. But I was having what is commonly known in the business, at Columbia, as a lot of ‘turntable hits.' I was getting a lot of play, but not a lot of sales, and I think that it was largely due to the kind of material that I was doing. I was being classified as a jazz singer, and I never, ever felt I was a jazz singer. I can sing jazz, but that was not my forté to begin with. I think the move from Columbia to Atlantic was about commercial success.”

In 1966, Aretha's CBS contract expired. Just as in her version of “My Coloring Book,” Columbia Records could simply take out their crayons and “color Aretha—gone!”

B
y the fall of 1966, Aretha Franklin was ready to explode creatively. At the age of twenty-four, she had already spent ten years in the recording business, holding her own emotions inside while being forced to mimic the styles of others. On
Songs of Faith
she had done her best imitation of Clara Ward and Mahalia Jackson. When she recorded her pair of albums with John Hammond, he had directed her to emulate his vision of Billie Holiday. On
Unforgettable
, she had echoed the songs and singing style of Dinah Washington. With
Running Out of Fools
, she had delivered her version of Mary Wells and Dionne Warwick. Even on her final 1960s album for Columbia,
Soft and Beautiful
, she had tried to mold herself into a black Barbra Streisand with her interpretations of “People” and “My Coloring Book.” Now it was time for her to show the world who she was. It was as if one of the identity-concealing charades on the television game show
To Tell the Truth
had just come to an end and the master of ceremonies had just said, “Will the real Aretha Franklin please stand up?”