Aretha Franklin (42 page)

“It was spiritually uplifting for me,” says Aretha. “I'm going to have to do this more often. It was wonderful, just wonderful. It was at least 110 degrees in the church. Packed to capacity. I thought doing it at the church was quite appropriate. I don't think I could have done it anywhere else.”

Three of the songs on the album were Clara Ward compositions. Aretha especially wanted to sing the songs “Jesus Hears Every Prayer,” “Surely God is Able,” and “Packing Up, Getting Ready to Go” as a tribute to Sister Ward. The latter song was recorded each of the three nights. After the completion of the third take, Aretha wasn't satisfied that she had gotten the ultimate version of the song to do Ward's composition justice. With her producer's rein strongly in hand, she commanded a retake of the song. The resulting version of “Packing Up, Getting Ready to Go” was definitely worth the effort. “It was so spirited to use that as a song going out,” said Carolyn Franklin. “Yes, I saw quite a few brethren jumping up for that one.”

Carolyn further explained that the whole project was kept secret by her sister until the last minute. “I had known she was going to do a gospel album,” Carolyn recalled, “but I didn't know we [Carolyn and Erma] were going to be involved. It was just one of those things where she said, ‘Let's do those songs by the Ward Singers we did as kids.' She said she wanted to recreate her childhood, like in the church with the candlelight service. My dad did that years ago.”

As producer, Aretha had to make the final decisions about editing the material. “There was so much of it,” she recalls, “I had to talk to Clive about whether it should be cut back. He decided we should do the best thing: make it a double LP.”

Ultimately, there were selections cut from the three hot nights in Detroit. A quiet but effective version of “God Specializes,” a tribute to Aretha's father on “Father I Stretch Out My Hands to Thee,” a Mavis Staples duet on “Be Grateful,” and another Joe Ligon duet on “Beams of Heaven” were all left on the editing room floor.

Considering the pop, rock, and R&B success that Aretha was experiencing with
Who's Zoomin' Who?
and
Aretha
, 1987 was the perfect time to go off on a gospel tangent. From a marketing standpoint, Clive Davis claimed that there would be no question of
One Lord, One Faith, One
Baptism
finding an audience. “There was never any negative implication regarding its potential,” Davis elaborated. “There was tremendous public interest in this album. I think it will become a landmark. Nobody does gospel better than Aretha. She has the ability to capture the core of a lyric, the nerve of a song, the essential soul.”

Jim Crawley, national sales vice-president of Arista Records, echoed Davis' feelings about marketing. “It is a totally different piece of product,” he explained. “The most important thing to remember is that music is art, but it is also business. With the gospel project, I think what we will try to do is get the album really well publicized to people who are in the demographic of who will buy the album—promote it even through the churches.”

“She should continually be introduced to a new and expanding audience,” Davis elaborated before the album was released. “That is what I have been doing. You have to stay contemporary and relevant. We work very closely together as a creative partnership. It has been working in a sense that almost every album [of Aretha's on Arista] has sold more than the one before.”

But was
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
commercially viable? “Record sales, man, that is the litmus test,” claims Jerry Wexler. If that is the case, Aretha's 1987 gospel album was an ambitious failure. Although the reviews were all very positive, in the end it did fail to find a record-buying audience. Critically, it was a huge, award-winning success, but in terms of albums sold, it gleaned the poorest sales figures of any of her Arista LPs. In
Billboard
magazine it peaked at Number 106.

The problems seemed to stem more from the album's edited presentation than from the lack of heart and soul on the singing tracks. In the long run, the half hour of invocations and speeches killed the intensity of the songs. Exceedingly poor editing found the song “Higher Ground” divided between side three and side four on the LP record version of the package. Only the compact-disc version of
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
was artistically successful—as the listener is free to delete all of the monologues, thanks to digital programming.

It is sad that such a sure-fire project, which was so highly anticipated, should fail so conclusively. Even the single version of “Oh Happy Day” failed to hit the charts. There were some high points, in spite of the lukewarm
sales figures that the album met with.
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
ended up winning a Dove Award from the Gospel Music Association as “Best Traditional Black Album.” Attention from the Grammy Awards in the gospel category, was guaranteed from the very start. (In January 1989 the album was nominated for a Grammy as the “Best Soul Gospel Performance, Female;” and the single “Oh Happy Day” by Aretha and Mavis, was nominated as the “Best Soul Gospel Performance by a Duo, Group, Choir, or Chorus.”)

While
The New York Times
claimed that the album “reaches for gospel's higher ground,” it also stated that the result is muted, fragmented, and unsatisfying.”
The New Yorker
magazine pointed out that “Compared with
Aretha Gospel
and
Amazing Grace
,
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
is more concerned with preserving the design and momentum of a church service than with presenting a concert composed of religious songs.” And although
Rolling Stone
gave the album four stars (out of a possible five), it also pointed out that, “ostensibly a record of celebration,
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
is weighed down by some very heavy crosses.”

Arista Records did get behind the album, to a certain extent. Press members on the Arista mailing list were sent promotional Aretha Franklin handheld fans, with the album cover reproduced on the front, and stapled to wooden paint stirrers—just like the funeral-parlor fans that are handed out at New Bethel Baptist Church. However, someone should have given novice producer Aretha some solid advice as to the sequencing of the album package. Instead of thirty minutes of talking, the four missing songs should have taken the place of the speeches.

However, the behind-the-scenes story of
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
makes the commercial failure of the package more understandable. What the general public didn't realize was that the album was the last recording Aretha owed Arista Records on her existing contract. Her contract required her to deliver to Arista a live album. What Arista would have preferred was a dynamite pop LP, such as
Aretha Live at Fillmore West
, which would provide the label with 1980s versions of “Respect,” “Think,” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”

As Erma Franklin confirmed, “All she owed them was a live album, and they didn't specify what kind. I'm sure they would have been more
pleased if she had done another pop album, but she was at liberty to do what she pleased.”

Speaking of the album, Aretha claimed, “It's not Peggy Lee. It's quite energetic and aggressive, with a real religious fervor.” She never mentioned the word “commercial” in her description of the LP.

Although
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
sold short of the Gold standard that her pop albums had recently attained, Clive Davis was not upset with the results or the sales figures. According to him, “We had no expectation that it would cross over. It was done purely as a gospel album, knowing that it would sell over another decade or so, and it's now close to 300,000 units [as of July 1988]. I would assume it will continue to sell, year in and year out. I think it's fine, and we didn't judge it by the normal standards. We always knew that we would, at some point in working together, do a gospel album, and I would let her take full charge of it. I think the singing is wonderful, I mean, she did it in a sort of a documentary way. It's a very personal album to Aretha—the fact that it was done in her father's church. I think it will be a mainstream catalog seller, and continue to sell over the years.”

Was
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
merely a vanity project that she knew would be fun, and finish her exiting Arista contract in a single stroke? The album was released in November 1987, and by January 1988 the media were already buzzing about the fact that representatives from several major record labels had flown to Detroit to lure Aretha away from Arista Records. Warner Brothers Records was one of the major-league companies reportedly in the bidding.

Although Aretha's association with Clive Davis and Arista had been quite successful commercially, not everyone agreed that the relationship had been a bed of roses. According to one former Arista employee, “I wouldn't be surprised if she'd had it with Clive Davis' ego by now. I mean enough is enough. And probably Warner's is offering her a lot of money. She's been threatening to get off the label since the
Who's Zoomin' Who?
album. She got her gospel album out of Clive, and I don't know what else she's got, but she'd like to get real money. I mean, while she's got some hits, she could command much bigger money than I think they're willing to give her. I think Clive's attitude is, ‘If I don't find you the songs, and
I don't put you together with the likes of Narada, you're not gonna get anywhere anyway. So you want to be that way about it, you ask for your half-million a record, or whatever.' I don't really know what she's asking. On the other hand, in Aretha's case, she doesn't work [concert tours], and the only way for her to make money is from the records; she's doing virtually no live performances anymore.”

Since she received her thirteenth and fourteenth Grammy Awards, her Dove Award, and an NAACP Award as “Female Artist of the Year,” all in the first half of 1988, it didn't matter that her gospel album didn't go Gold. As a pop and R&B star, she was hotter than ever. This gave her the upper hand as she began negotiations on her next album contract.

Amid her record label shopping spree,
Billboard
magazine leaked out some of the details of Aretha's demands. According to the publication, what she was asking as her new fee was a million dollars per album! If she indeed ended up commanding that price, she would be setting a new precedent in recording advances.

While she was deciding which major recording company would usher her into the 1990s, Aretha had several other projects to occupy herself with. In the spring of 1988, the Queen of Soul was busy posing for artists from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London, planning a proposed Detroit Easter Parade [which didn't take place], filming an anti-DWI public-service television spot, and recording a new song with the Four Tops. She was also preoccupied with the health of her sister Carolyn—who was dying of cancer.

In retrospect, it is easy to see why
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
was important to Aretha when she recorded it. Although it was a closely guarded secret, she knew that Carolyn was fighting a losing battle against the ravages of cancer. The gospel album—recorded with her sisters—was to be their last project together. Little sister Carolyn had always been under Aretha's protective wing. Whenever Carolyn would get into a schoolyard fight as a child, Aretha was there to protect her. When she became a singing star, and Carolyn's own recording career floundered, Aretha recorded her sisters compositions, and made Carolyn a star in her own right. When Carolyn was stricken with cancer, Aretha was right there to help her fight her battle to live. Aretha moved Carolyn into her Bloomfield Hills home
to give her younger sister round-the-clock care. Like the passing of her father, Carolyn's untimely death, on April 25, 1988, was unspeakably painful for Aretha.

Although her solo recording career had ended in the 1970s, Carolyn had remained quite active in the entertainment business in the 1980s, thanks to Aretha. She appeared in the movie
The Blues Brothers
, on Aretha's 1986 Showtime TV special, and on the 1987
James Brown and Friends
telecast.

Having become friendly with Dan Hartman during the James Brown taping, Carolyn sang background vocals on the 1987 Paul King album
Joy
. Hartman produced the album by British singer King, and he flew Carolyn from Detroit to his Connecticut recording studio. According to Hartman, she was energetic and full of life. The title of Carolyn's debut album in the 1960s was
Baby Dynamite
, and she used to laugh, “They don't call me ‘Baby Dynamite' for nothing!”

“Carolyn is fantastic!” Hartman proclaimed after working with her on the Paul King album. “She's the consummate musician, and sort of puts it all into the drive of helping people, which I think is brilliant. She's not interested in the center-stage spot for herself, as much as she's interested in helping people. She does a lot of community work in Detroit, and told me about the young talent she works with there.”

One of her dreams was to obtain her college degree, and to set up a practice in the field of entertainment law. She was working on her degree when she was diagnosed as having cancer, in March 1987. Her illness did not dissuade her from pursuing her dreams, and she continued her studies while she underwent treatment.

According to Carolyn, “Kids sign their lives away [in the music business]. You have to know basic law and basic business. The young artists have so many things working against them. It's a hellified business.” It was her intention to help young singers who were just starting their careers.

“We all knew she was in bad health,” recalls Dan Hartman. “I knew, in fact, that she'd had an operation, a very serious operation, before Christmas. I knew from ‘Retha's agents, because I was in touch with all those people, when Carolyn had gone in the hospital for a major cancer operation. Ruth [Bowen] said, ‘It's pretty major, but she's pulled through
it okay, and she's gonna be at Aretha's house convalescing.' So I sent her a giant bouquet of flowers at Aretha's house.”