Aretha Franklin (46 page)

The album opens with Aretha's exciting updating of the Sly & the Family Stone classic, “Everyday People.” The song begins with Franklin shouting, “Yo, gang, let's kick the ballistics,” and then she proceeds to launch
into a spectacular extravaganza of soulful singing, joyful cheerleading, and improvised scatting. With a lively and upbeat vocal background troupe assisting her, she turns the classic sixties song into a pulsating party of a cut. At one point, the chorus cheers her on with a rhythmic “Go, go, go, Queen of Soul.”

The selections on this diverse and beautifully produced album range from the snappy and sassy “Mary Goes Round,” to the classy arrangement she has on Michel Legrand's lush “What Did You Give.” Soul sister Ree clearly gets even by “dissing” her man in “What You See Is What You Sweat,” and has some frivolous fun with Luther Vandross on their pop duet “Doctor's Orders.” One of the biggest highlights on the album is the thoughtful and beautiful ballad, “Ever Changing Times,” a duet with Michael McDonald on this Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager composition.

Another memorable cut is Aretha's interpretation of the show-stopping song “I Dreamed a Dream” from Broadway's
Les Miserables
. Accompanying herself on the acoustic piano, Franklin takes this powerhouse ballad of defeat, and changes the final lyrics to make her performance an anthem of encouragement and empowerment. In the plot of the show, this song is sung by the character of Fantine, who uses it to lament that her wretched life is over and she is about to die in defeat. Whereas Fantine sings that life has “killed” her dreams, Aretha sings that life “
must not
” kill hers. It had been decades since Aretha had tackled a Broadway tune on one of her albums, and in her inimitable fashion, she made this one a signature anthem all her own.

The reviews for the album were decidedly mixed. Stephen Holden in
Rolling Stone
proclaimed, “Although the material runs the gamut of styles, Franklin infuses her personality so indelibly into every song that somehow it all holds together … ‘I Dreamed a Dream' … from the Broadway musical
Les Miserables
is turned into an obstacle course of vocal challenges with Franklin tossing around saucy embellishments and shivering melismata and bearing down so convincing on the line ‘Tigers tear your dreams' that you can almost feel the teeth and hear the rips …
What You See Is What You Sweat
stands as one of her better albums. If the songs are uneven, they don't prevent the Queen of Soul from exuberantly
expressing the breadth of her musical personality, from regal pop-gospel diva to funky everyday person.”
(1)

However, in
Entertainment Weekly
, Amy Linden wrote, “Just because Aretha Franklin has a voice magnificent enough to sing the phone book doesn't mean she should . . . a schizoid mix of mediocre material that includes the pointless, chirpy ‘Mary Goes Round' and the pop-soul fluff of the title song … Her duet with Luther Vandross (‘Doctor's Orders') is so cluttered with synthesizers you can barely hear the two masters.”
(2)

“Everyday People” was released as a single from the album, complete with three different mixes of the song, two of which appear on the album. According to Aretha, it was her own idea to cover a Sly Stone number. “I've always liked his catalog,” she explained at the time. “There are many things that he did in the sixties that I really liked, and ‘Everyday People' just kinda grabbed me, when I started re-listening to his catalog, that was the one that I liked the best.”
(3)

Aretha looked trim and fit when she made a rare TV appearance on the local Detroit talk show,
Dayna
, to promote her
What You See Is What You Sweat
album on July 10, 1991. Wearing a white leather mini-skirt accented with black checks, matching jacket and a black blouse, she looked lovely, and spoke quite candidly about her life. She also performed “Everyday People” in front of her hometown studio audience.

She appeared to be very relaxed and focused on this particular show. Part of the credit goes to the talkshow hostess, Dayna, who is one of Aretha's local girlfriends. Franklin seemed much more at ease and centered than she has been on some of the network morning shows where everything is rushed, and interviews are often brief at best. When she was asked by Dayna what her advice would be to someone caught in the throes of tragedy, Aretha somberly replied, “Just a few words and that is: ‘Surely, God is able.'”
(3)

Fielding an inquiry from an audience member as to her secrets to staying youthful appearing, Franklin laughingly claimed that her secret was a combination of “Slim Fast and a real good man.”
(3)

When Dayna inquired about relationships, she asked if Aretha had encountered any problems with intimidating male suitors. Aretha snapped back in true girlfriend-to-girlfriend fashion, “I am as approachable as any
other woman. Not on-stage, [but] when I come off stage. I'm not charging admission at my front door, and there won't be a concert inside. So, approach me the same way that you would any other woman. However, there are some men who—some who—I guess you could say, they are intimidated. But those are just the ones who are a little insecure within themselves, and who are not confident within themselves. What I do [as an occupation] and who I am has nothing to do with a man and a woman relationship.”
(3)

She also defended her convictions to continue to live in the Motor City, in spite of the crime and problems which continued to plague that urban area. According to Aretha, “I think what's happening in Detroit, is happening in most major cities today, so I don't think that Detroit should be singled out in any unique or special way having to do with crime and problems that major cities are having. And, most of my family and my friends are here, and this is home to me.”
(3)

Perhaps the most wonderful thing that Aretha said during the hour-long all-Aretha tribute on the chat show, came when someone in the audience asked her what her plans were for retirement. With conviction in her voice, Franklin replied, “I'm NOT gonna retire!”
(3)
With that, the studio audience launched into a thunderously huge round of applause.

In spite of her efforts to promote her latest album,
What You See Is What You Sweat
came and went without much fanfare. The song “Everyday People” made it to Number Thirteen on the R&B Singles charts, and spent one week on the UK charts at Number Sixty-nine. Her snappy duet with Luther Vandross was nominated for a Grammy Award, but that was the height of its success. On the American album charts, this varied LP only made it to Number 153. A sales failure, the album is now considered a forgotten gem in her Arista album catalog. Whether it just got lost in the shuffle that year, or was out of touch with what was going on amidst the record charts that season, it seemed to disappear as quickly as it was released.

Yet, she was very much in the public eye. Aretha returned to New York City, September 13 and 14 to play Radio City Music Hall once again. Back in Detroit on October 30, she was at the Westin Hotel at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit to sing “Happy Birthday” to her buddy, Rev. Jesse Jackson.

On November 11, 1991 Aretha made a comical guest appearance on the top-rated CBS comedy television series,
Murphy Brown
. Throughout the show's successful run, actress Candice Bergen portrayed the character of Brown as a hardboiled network newswoman who idolized classic R&B music from the 1960s—to the point where her own flat and off-key renditions of soul classics were often comedy bits amidst the series' run. In the plot of this particular episode, Murphy gets to meet her soul idol, Aretha Franklin, and at the end of the show—is invited to join her for a rendition of one of her hits at the piano. The episode went on to become one of that season's most popular half hours.

According to Bergen at the time, “Aretha Franklin is the patron saint of our show. From the beginning, she has been one of our most important trademarks. She is Murphy Brown's hero, she's my hero. And, in my life— which has not been unexciting, one of the most thrilling moments was when I got to share a piano bench with Aretha Franklin when she played and sang ‘Natural Woman.'”
(4)

Beginning on December 29, 1991, Aretha Franklin could be heard as the singing voice on a series of nationally run Pizza Hut television commercials. She took the Fontella Bass hit “Rescue Me,” and sang it as “Deliver Me,” to commemorate the fast food chain's entry into the delivery end of the pizza business. Some die-hard fans bristled at the idea that Aretha should position herself as the “Queen” of pepperoni and cheese.
The Tucson Daily Star
amusingly ran an item which classified the event as “an act that—on a scale of appalling events—rates as high as asking Picasso to design a new burrito wrapper for Taco Bell.”
(5)

Perhaps the biggest kept resolution of the year was the fact that Aretha had quit smoking cigarettes. “I stopped smoking in 1991. It helped my voice tremendously. The clarity and everything. The range even increased,” she was later to explain.
(6)

“It was messing with my voice,” she finally had to admit. The good news was: “The higher notes are back.” However, the bad news was that her weight increased as soon as she quit smoking. The fit look she had on the
Dayna
show was gone for the rest of the decade. “But,” she had to admit, “I'd rather be overweight a few pounds and work on that, than on my way to cancer.”
(7)

On February 25, 1992 she was back on-stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. This time she was singing at the Grammy Awards. She performed the song “Ever Changing Times” with Michael McDonald that evening. The following night she was honored by the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, at their third annual Pioneer Awards. At the festivities, which were held at the Rainbow Room high atop Rockefeller Center, Aretha was saluted alongside her singing contemporaries Chuck Jackson, The Dells, The Staple Singers, Rufus Thomas, and Bobby “Blue” Bland.

That same year, an avalanche of retrospective Aretha Franklin material hit the marketplace, in the embodiment of two separate CD boxed sets, and the debut of Rhino Records beginning to issue several of the classic albums from her glory days at Atlantic Records—many of them on CD for the very first time. When the 1990s girl group En Vogue revived Aretha's “Something He Can Feel” from the 1976
Sparkle
album, and turned it into a fresh hit, the spotlight was rightfully thrown on Franklin's original rendition of the Curtis Mayfield penned song. Aretha's long-forgotten
Sparkle
album made its CD debut in 1992, followed in 1993 by CD's of
Young, Gifted and Black
, and in 1994 by
Hey Now Hey, The Other Side of The Sky
.

The most exhaustive re-issueing of classic Aretha however, came in September 1992 with Rhino's four-CD boxed set,
Aretha Franklin: Queen of Soul—The Atlantic Recordings
. This ultimate Aretha package traces her Atlantic years in eighty-six cuts, from 1967's “I Ain't Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” to 1977's “Break It To Me Gently.” All of the obvious hits and favorite album cuts are here, plus some rarely heard gems including: “Dark End of The Street,” “So Swell When You're Well,” “Master of Eyes (The Deepness of Your Eyes),” “With Everything I Feel In Me,” “Mr. D.J. (5 for The D.J.),” “Sparkle,” “All The King's Men,” and “Something He Can Feel.” And, thanks to writer David Nathan, several quotes from the original edition of this book appear in the liner notes of the beautifully packaged eighty page booklet. The package went on to win a Grammy Award as the “Best Liner Notes” of 1992, with the award being presented to the writers of the essays included.

Not to be outdone, the Legacy division of Columbia Records
assembled a double CD album entitled
Aretha Franklin: Jazz to Soul
, including thirty-nine songs on two distinctly different discs. The first disc is dedicated to Aretha's blues and jazz sides from her Columbia days, including “What a Diff'rence a Day Makes,” “Blue Holiday,” and “Drinking Again.” It also featured three rarities: a previously unreleased version of “Once In a While,” a previously unreleased alternate version of the song “Skylark,” and a previously unreleased alternate take of “Impossible.” Disc Two traced Aretha's most commercial recordings for Columbia, including “Operation Heartbreak,” “Soulville,” “Runnin' Out of Fools,” “Trouble in Mind,” “Walk on By,” “Every Little Bit Hurts,” and “Mockingbird.”

When the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) tallied up the cumulative sales for Aretha's first gospel album,
Amazing Grace
, they found that it had exceeded sales of two million copies. So, on August 26, 1992, they certified it both Platinum, and Double Platinum.

While her fans were delving into her past recordings, for Aretha it was full steam ahead with her personal appearances, both in public and at private events. In the spring of 1992, a new Aretha song—”If I Lose”— was included on the soundtrack from the popular Woody Harleson and Wesley Snipes film
White Men Can't Jump
. It is an eclectic album featuring everything from the rap of BoyzIIMen and Queen Latifah, to gospel/pop from Bebe & Cece Winans. “If I Lose” shows off Ree on a jazzy piano led ballad. On June 12 she performed “Bridge over Troubled Water” and “Everyday People” at a gathering of New York City's Friar's Club, honoring Arista president, and Aretha mentor, Clive Davis. The event was held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue.

On July 14, 1992, Aretha Franklin made an appearance at the Democratic National Convention, singing the National Anthem. For her, this was the beginning of a strong presence throughout the decade, of being involved in political events, performing at the White House, and being honored at official Washington D.C. functions.