Aretha Franklin (41 page)

However, a behind-the-scenes production assistant says that the “4-1-1” on “the Godfather vs. the Queen” was one of competitiveness on Brown's part. Everything had gone without a hitch during rehearsals on Friday afternoon, January 9.

“It was like a friendly competition,” musical director Dan Hartman recalls of the rehearsals. “I think they happened to really love each other, because of what they both stand for, even though James needed his bit of the spotlight. And, certainly, Aretha deserves and got her part of the spotlight. They just think the world of each other, because they sort of created this thing—this ‘soul' image. I saw [that] at the rehearsals, when James Brown came on-stage, he was there first, just moments before she stepped up on-stage. Then she stepped up, and it was just the neatest feeling to see the two of them together. It was a special moment.”

According to Hartman, Aretha kept the conversation to a minimum. “She said maybe two words the whole time, like ‘Ummm-hmmm, okay.' That kind of thing. We were saying, ‘Well, we'll do this song here,' going over the work, and she said, ‘Ummm-hmmm, ummm-hmmm, okay.' And I said, ‘Why don't you run through your numbers?' And she said, ‘Okay.' Then, when she sings—her rehearsals were as astonishing as any of her greatest performances on record. She just came up on-stage in street clothes, and no big ‘do' or anything, you know, and just walked up and said ‘hello' and was introduced to everybody. She was very cool, and very smooth. When she sang at the sound check I was amazed, Aretha is a smooth pro—she's the quintessential soul singer.”

The Friday-night taping featured only Brown and Wilson Pickett. Together they presented a sixteen-song, one hour-and-forty-minute show for an enthusiastic crowd. On Saturday, Franklin, Palmer, Cocker, and Vera were added to the lineup to tape their solos, and duets with James. Although their rehearsals had proceeded smoothly, some sort of friction apparently developed between James and Aretha.

According to the production assistant, “James was definitely intimidated by Aretha—absolutely. Especially because it was her club and it was her town. He turned her monitors down when she was singing, which is a really shitty thing to do to a singer. It was really a mean thing for him to have done. It was apparent to people in the audience—[that
there was a] rift between them. However, after careful editing, it was still magic what they did together on-stage.”

“The only thing that upsets Aretha on-stage is if she can't hear herself,” says Barbara Shelley. She recalls that “the sound check was great, but by the time Aretha got on-stage—and the sound was completely off—she went crazy! She kept signaling me and Cecil to come on over. So we walked out of our seats and went right up to the stage. Cecil said she was threatening to leave the stage if the sound wasn't fixed. Quite honestly, there were a hundred people in the crew, hovering all over the place, so there was no way that any one of us had any control over anything. She was extremely upset when she came off the stage.”

To watch the television special, one would never guess that there were any major problems between the two soul stars. What ultimately did appear on the TV screen was Aretha's red-hot performance of “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.” In fact, her delivery was far more soulful than it had been on her overly orchestrated 1986 Showtime special. It's no wonder Brown was threatened by Franklin. He was supposed to return to center stage to do a medley of that song with his hit “It's a Man's World,” just as they had done in rehearsal. Without informing anyone, he decided to cut the song, and instead asked a startled Aretha to slow-dance with him while the band vamped the music to “It's a Man's World.”

Gary Graff of
The Detroit Free Press
recalls being very disappointed by what he witnessed at the TV taping. “They looked like they weren't enjoying being with each other,” he says of the James-and-Aretha segment. “You've got to remember, James is the consummate showman, he'll put a smiling face on anything, and he did not look happy. If you watch the special, it doesn't look like there is any chemistry there, or any communication. They barely look at each other. It was kind of nasty.”

Whatever the problem was between Brown and Franklin, it seemed to be dispelled after Aretha sang a solo version of her then-current hit, “Jimmy Lee.” James came on-stage again, and the pair sang a duet version of his 1964 hit “Please, Please, Please,” without a major conflict. For the finale, James and Aretha were joined by Wilson Pickett, Billy Vera, Robert Palmer, Joe Cocker, and Dan Hartman. The cast of rock and soul stars proceeded to tear into an exciting version of James Brown's 1980s hit “Living in America.”

Although Aretha was ticked off at James, she maintained her cool. According to Barbara Shelley, “I will say she was a lady about the whole thing. When she got off the stage, she still agreed to do various interviews that she had commitments to do, to promote the special, in spite of the problems she encountered.”

Later that year, Aretha returned to the church for an inspired event. After fifteen years, Aretha was ready to record a new album of gospel music. “I never left gospel,” she proclaims. “It's an integral part of myself. I carry the gospel with me regardless of what I am singing. Gospel is my background, my roots.”

With that in mind, in July 1987, Aretha mounted one of the most challenging and fulfilling albums projects of her career:
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
. The resulting two-record set is much more than a mere recording of gospel singing and inspirational performances—it is an all-star revival meeting captured on tape during three hot and steamy nights at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit. More than an Aretha Franklin solo album, the package is a deeply inspired church service in which the music is only part of the program. Over thirty minutes of spoken word, contained in six separate invocations or speeches, makes up a large portion of this album, interleaved into over fifty minutes of music. (On the original compact disc, two of the six spoken segments—totaling fourteen minutes—were deleted so the program would fit onto a single disc.)

There are only three solo Aretha Franklin performances on
One Lore, One Faith, One Baptism
: “Walk in the Light,” “Ave Maria,” and “The Lord's Prayer.” The other seven songs are duets with Mavis Staples, Joe Ligon, Reverend Jaspar Williams, and the Franklin Sisters (Carolyn and Erma Franklin, and their cousin Brenda Corbett). The speakers on the album are equally notable: Reverend Jesse Jackson; Aretha's brother, Reverend Cecil Franklin; Reverend Jaspar Williams; and Reverend Donald Parsons of the Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Chicago.

“This was by popular demand!” Aretha proclaimed. “It's commonly known I came from gospel, and I can't tell you how many people have been asking for this since
Amazing Grace
. I wanted to do it sooner, but there were always prior commitments. I wanted to do a new gospel collection,
because gospel made the most significant contributions to my musical training and singing, since I grew up in the church.”

Not only was the project an historic one in that it reunited Aretha, Erma, and Carolyn with the music of their childhood, in their father's church, but it also marked the first album that Aretha ever produced entirely by herself. “I spoke to Clive Davis about it, and he loved it—he even made me the producer,” she explained. “That's great, because I wanted to record many of the songs I loved as a child in the church—my own gospel favorites. No one could produce it like I could.

“I like producing, mainly because it gives me all of the freedom that I would like to have in recording,” she explains. “Everything is me. There are no outside influences; from the background, to the track, to the selection of the material, to the performance, it's my thing. That's what I like most about producing. That is not to say that I don't like being produced by other producers, and good producers—and there are many of them. But I very much like doing my own thing too.

“This was my baby, my labor of love,” Aretha said, glowing after the three nights of recording at the New Bethel Baptist Church. “I wanted to produce this album, because I didn't think anyone was better qualified than myself. Those ladies in this business that want to produce, should. It wasn't that difficult for me.”

The album was recorded on July 27, 28, and 30 in the middle of a heat wave. It was 105 degrees outside those three days, and the evenings at New Bethel were every bit as hot—musically as well as on the thermometer. The crowds of four thousand people in church those nights were handed fans to cool themselves. The fans were printed with full-color advertisements for one of three local funeral homes: McCall, Swanson, or Cole. Outside the church, signs reading “Funeral in Progress” kept people from parking in the way of the crowds, the press, and the recording engineers. Although the music that was made at the altar those nights in downtown Detroit was indeed “to die for,” it was a celebration of life and of eternity, not of death or mourning. They were presented with all the fervor of an old-time Baptist revival meeting, with the Queen of Soul herself leading the procession.

“It was exciting,” Rita Griffin recalls of those three hot summer nights. “Anytime Detroit does something, or anything musical is done that
pertains to Aretha or Motown, it is quite a family reunion. Everybody was gathered there that you hadn't seen in a long time. Along with members of the church, of course, it was filled with people. I like this about her: Reverend Franklin had a thing where the doors of the church were never closed. There was no such thing as a ‘private' anything going on at New Bethel. It's very much open to the public. I like the way Aretha handled it—pretty much the same way. Naturally, tickets had to be issued, but there was no charge for them. So there was a cross-section of people—friends and fans and family, and the church family.”

In 1972, when
Amazing Grace
was recorded, the tickets to attend the gospel session at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles were sold for ten dollars apiece. For the 1987 sessions, tickets were given away through the church, and in giveaways on two local radio stations, WGPR and WCHB. The collection plate was passed and several thousand dollars were raised for the Detroit Children's Hospital and to feed the needy.

In addition to the established gospel stars who sang with Aretha, she was also backed by a 100-voice choir comprising the choir of the New Bethel Baptist Church and the Thomas Whitfield Group. Minister Thomas A. Whitfield supervised the music and choral arrangements, and the choir director was Michael E. Fletcher. However, the entire event was coordinated and produced by Aretha herself. Not only did she choose the songs, the musicians, her singing partners, the speakers, the choir director, and the church, but she also decided how the finished package should be presented.”

“It's a concept album,” she explained. “We had church as well as recorded [songs]. There are spoken-word pieces leading from cut to cut. For the opening cut, ‘Jesus Is the Light of the World,' the choir marched in holding candles. It was beautiful.”

One of the most exciting moments in the three nights of recording came on Monday, July 27, when Aretha's longtime friend, Reverend Jesse Jackson, was on hand to speak and to introduce segments of that evening's program. Jackson referred to Aretha as “our sister beloved, who wears the coat of many colors—Sister Aretha Franklin.”

There were several awe-inspiring performances. Aretha's slow, sincere versions of “The Lord's Prayer” and “Ave Maria” were performed with
an almost operatic quality. Listening to them is like eavesdropping on a thankful woman who is praying to God.

The two duets by Aretha and Mavis Staples are worth the entire purchase of the album. Introducing Staples to the microphone, Aretha explained to the congregation, “Mavis and I grew up, as teenagers, traveling with our families—she and the Staple Singers, and myself and my dad, and Lucy Branch and Sammy Bryant. And we met on a Mississippi road one evening. And we're going back to our roots tonight.”

“Sho' nuff!” shouted Staples in reply. With that, the pair launched into a version of “Oh Happy Day” that shook the rafters of the church.

The two-hour program ended with a soul-stirring rendition of “Packing Up, Getting Ready to Go,” which teamed Aretha with Mavis Staples, Joe Ligon of the gospel group the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and the Franklin Sisters. Detroit newspapers called the event “The Gospel Songfest.” Indeed it was.

“It's a great album, and I'm proud of it,” said Aretha, when the sessions were completed. “[It] brought back so many good memories. Gospel just has the inspiration that rock doesn't have.”

“My schedule is really pretty busy,” explained Thomas Whitfield of his surprise involvement in
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
. “I produce a lot of primary gospel artists, but [Aretha] called me and said she wanted to have a meeting on a Tuesday night. I said, ‘Well shoot—I'm not going to miss that evening!' So, I went over and she started to tell me what songs she wanted to do, what keys they were in, and the things she wanted me to arrange. That it was going to be on July 27, 28, and 30. From the time we started to put those songs together, there was a feeling in the room that you wouldn't believe. We couldn't hardly have a rehearsal for having ‘church.' People were crying and shouting!”

According to Whitfield, Aretha's desire was to recapture the feeling of the traditional revival meetings and gospel shows that she and her sisters used to witness in the 1950s. “For singers today,” he says, “it is hard to replicate how they sang back then, because they didn't really sing structured at all. The parts just kind of
fell
. You had to kind of catch on. Today, gospel music has come to a place where it is a lot more structured and a lot more professional. So we updated the sound.”