Aretha Franklin (5 page)

Combining her love of singing and her passion for watching boxing matches, Aretha developed her own formula for a vocal TKO. By the time she was fourteen years old she was stunning people every Sunday at the New Bethel Baptist Church with her expressive gospel singing.

Just as Mozart had entertained the crowned heads of Europe with his piano playing as a child prodigy in the Eighteenth Century, young Aretha Franklin sang her heart out with the voice of a world-weary woman four times her age. Before long, New Bethel Baptist Church wasn't enough to contain her vocal gifts alone; it was time for the rest of the world to marvel at the wonder of her voice.

In the late 1940s, Reverend Franklin had begun to expand his realm beyond the boundaries of Detroit through personal appearances and recordings. It all started on the radio. A local Detroit radio station persuaded him to allow his sermons to be broadcast to a listening audience
unable to attend church. A record producer in town, Joe Von Battles, heard Reverend Franklin on the radio one Sunday and began recording his sermons on LPs to spread the gospel. After Revered Franklin recorded several sermons on Battles' own label, JVB Records, Battles licensed them to Chess Records for national distribution. According to Aretha, her father left quite a legacy of preaching on record. “He has about fifty volumes on Chess Records, meaning fifty sermons. He usually prefaced his sermons with a hymn,” she explains.

Since the records were distributed nationally, it wasn't long before religious radio stations across America began broadcasting Reverend Franklin's sermons. This made it possible for him to organize a traveling revival show, complete with a choir, gospel singing stars, and, of course, Reverend Franklin and his oratory as the centerpiece of the show.

With the encouragement of Clara Ward, James Cleveland, and her father, the teenage Aretha would spend her summer vacations away from Detroit's Northern High School touring the country with the revival show. For a young girl, life on the road was quite an education. It wasn't long before she was exposed to several aspects of life that none of the long talks with Mahalia Jackson around a simmering pot of greens in the kitchen of her house ever covered. She witnessed drinking, carousing, all-night partying, and heavy doses of Southern prejudice on these out-of-town jaunts. While her father traveled from city-to-city by plane for his appearances, young Aretha and her siblings stayed with the rest of the troupe on cross-country buses.

Of the racial prejudice she encountered, Aretha reveals, “When my father and I traveled in the South, we ran into it from time to time, usually in restaurants with [separate] black and white sections. Racism is more sophisticated and subtle today [in the 1980s], but still prevalent.”

Her brother Cecil adds that “driving eight or ten hours trying to make a gig, and being hungry and passing restaurants all along the road, and having to go off the highway into some little city to find a place to eat because you're black—that had its effect.”

“When you were singing gospel,” says Erma Franklin, “it was very hard to get your money after the program was over. The promoter would run off with all the money, so it was almost a knock-down-drag-out fight
to get on the show with Revered Franklin because then you wouldn't have to worry about your money.”

Erma also remembers that “blacks had to stay with blacks in the South. You had to stay at black motels, so you had your gospel groups and your rhythm & blues stars would come up to my father and they would say, ‘We heard your album and we think it's great.' They'd introduce themselves and they'd become fast friends with everyone else who were stars on the road. So when they would come to Detroit they would call my dad and come over to the house. He'd have dinner fixed for them and they'd stay. Invariably, they'd start singing then there would be one big party! Anything that you had heard them sing, you would just holler it out and they'd do it! You didn't have to beg ‘em. We were hams, we all were.”

Aretha especially remembers those long hours spent on the road. “We'd drive thousands and thousands of miles,” she recalls. “I've been to California from Detroit about four times through the desert. Never again! Never again! That's the way people traveled back then. Baby, those steep mountains with no railing! That was worse than coming across in a horse and buggy, I'm sure.”

Traveling on those gospel caravan extravaganzas prepared Aretha for the concert tours she would embark on in the 1960s and 1970s. “I traveled from about the age of thirteen to sixteen with my dad, singing with the Roberta Martin Singers, the Clara Ward Singers Caravan—real gospel giants. It was great training.” She also made several lifelong friends along the way such as Mavis Staples, who sang along with her father, “Pop” Staples, and with her sisters, Yvonne and Cleo, performing gospel as the Staples Singers.

During this time, Reverend Franklin gave his daughter constant guidance. “He encouraged me to sing,” says Aretha. “He taught me to conduct myself as a lady.” When she would rush through a song out of nervousness, he would say to her, “Take your time; say what you want to say.” She took his advice and her reward came during one of the cross-country gospel caravans—a chance to record her singing at Oakland Arena.

“We weren't in the studio,” Aretha explains. “It was a church service in Oakland, California. My dad appeared in many of the major auditoriums
throughout the country and I appeared with him on weekends as a featured vocalist. So Chess Records, after having recorded many of his sermons, came out to California and recorded that service.” That same year, a compilation of several of her gospel performance from New Bethel Baptist Church was assembled on one album and Chess released it under the title
Songs of Faith
. (In 1964, it was re-released as
The Gospel Sound of Aretha Franklin
and in 1982 it was reissued again, as
Aretha Gospel
on Checker Records.)

The album itself is a true piece of recorded history. With only a piano backing her, and the voices of the church choir on one of the tunes, the pure and untrained sound of fourteen-year-old Aretha singing hymns and spiritual songs is an amazing preview of the greatness to come. Her performances on this album are underscored by the excited shouts of “Amen!” and “Oh Lord!” On “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” young Aretha's singing is clear and strong. When she wails in the middle of “Precious Lord (Part Two),” she demonstrates the passion she later unleashed on her Atlantic recordings. Like the formula she would use throughout her career, she took several songs from someone she admired, reinterpreted them, and made them all her own. In this case it was Clara Ward's “Never Grow Old” (as well as the two previously mentioned songs) she took hold of and improved upon.

On “He Will Wash You Whiter Than Snow” Aretha is heard singing the lead with the church choir answering her vocal pleas. This album previews several of her late-sixties hits, on which the Sweet Inspirations sang the choral accompaniment. On this particular song, the recording quality echoes the sound of the great blues singer Bessie Smith. In fact, Aretha's vocal on “He Will Wash You Whiter Than Snow” is reminiscent of Bessie's blues delivery.

While Aretha was discovering her vocal capacities on the altar of the New Bethel Baptist Church, the surrounding Detroit neighborhood was humming with music of all sorts. Otis Williams recalls hearing wonderful things about that little Franklin girl who had people in awe of her voice when she sang on Sundays. In 1964, Williams became world-famous as one of the Temptations. A skinny little neighborhood girl named Diane Ross joined two school friends, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, and
together they became the Supremes. (When she became famous, Ross changed her name from Diane to Diana.) Friends of the Franklins, the Robinsons, had a little boy named William, and he was interested in becoming a pop singer. Everyone called William by his nickname, “Smokey.” It is amazing to think that such a concentration of musical talent was centered in that one area of Detroit.

According to Smokey Robinson, “When Aretha was a child she could go to the piano and play—nearly like she plays now! None of the rest of us could just go sit down and play the piano and sing like that!”

Aretha remembers all of these singing stars as kids in the neighborhood with little more than their dreams and their vocal talent. “I didn't really know Diana,” she reminisces. “On my way home, I would see her from time to time. She was screaming off the back porch one night at somebody, and I said, ‘Oh, that's that Diane Ross girl.' Smokey and I—our families had been friends going back till I was nine, ten years old. Smokey would come over with his group [The Miracles] to rehearse. Erma and I used to love the Flamingos. We did ‘I Only Have Eyes for You.' We knew all the Flamingos' dance routines, so when Smokey was trying to put something together for the Miracles, we showed him what we knew. That was probably one of their first bits of choreography. And we did it gratis!”

Music industry executive Billy Davis distinctly remembers that era in Detroit. “In hindsight, there certainly was a lot of young talent who was inspired by each other,” he recalls, “and inspired by groups like the Dominoes, the Four Buddies, Ruth Brown, the Ravens, and groups who gained their popularity in the mid-fifties. Independent record labels began to spring up because all this talent was there. It was easy to put out a record in those days, and very cheap. In 1956, with five hundred dollars you could record it, press it, and take it around to your local stations and get it played. Within two or three weeks, you might have yourself a hit. It was very active and alive and inspiring. You could discover a talent one day, have them in the studio within a week and have a record out and on the air within two weeks. It was an exciting time in Detroit. A lot of kids who would probably have ended up in all types of trouble were singing on street corners instead of doing things that they might have been getting into. I was one of them, so I'm talking to you from experience.”

Before Motown Records was founded and made million-selling stars out of the Miracles, the Supremes, Martha & the Vandellas, and the Temptations, the local musical marvel was clearly Aretha Franklin. Don David, who grew up to own a recording studio in Detroit called United Sound (where Aretha now records), remembers those days when all eyes were on teenage Aretha. “We spent an awful lot of time as kids in Reverend Franklin's church,” says Don. “Those Sunday nights when he would finish preaching, we would listen to little Aretha up on-stage, and she'd turn the whole church on its cheek. Man, we'd look forward to that!”

“We belonged to her father's church,” Mary Wilson recalls of Aretha and her sisters. “We went there every Sunday from 1956 up until 1963. That's when I first heard her. In fact, it was Aretha and Erma who were singing all the time, and they were fantastic! When I first heard Aretha, I adored her style. I adored everything she was doing, because she had a way of singing gospel that transcended all musical boundaries. Sometimes in gospel music you can only enjoy it in the framework of religion. Gospel was part of my religion, but I was into pop and R&B music. Aretha had a way of making me enjoy my gospel roots in a pop context. In church she would make you feel that you were listening to good music and not being preached to from the Bible. That was the beauty of her style.”

Mary vividly remembers Aretha's younger sister, Carolyn, from Algers School which they attended together. “Carolyn Franklin was very tough,” says Wilson. “She was the baby in the family, but she always had street gangs, and she was the gang leader. She was a little bully. With everyone in the family being such great singers, they were all local celebrities, and she usually used her family position to get her own way.”

Especially impressive in young Mary's eyes was C. L. himself. “Reverend Franklin was the kind of man who had so much charisma that everyone was fascinated by him. Women absolutely loved him. He was a ladies' man! My mother adored him. That charisma he had. He was so charming that people were drawn to him. He was also a very eloquent man and very popular. I can see why his children would be as enamored of him as everybody else. It's as if none of the men in Aretha's life could ever match her father because he was so dynamic.”

While Aretha was becoming locally famous as a gospel-singing child star, the music industry was changing and growing around her. Although she still loved gospel music, she was becoming fascinated by the hot new music she was hearing on the radio. One of the first R&B singers to grab Aretha's attention was the girl they called “Miss Rhythm”—Ruth Brown. Like Aretha, Ruth had begun singing spiritual songs in her father's church. She became an R&B singing sensation and later a pop star. Brown was known for her hits “5-10-15 Hours” (1952) and “Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean” (1953) on the R&B charts, but in 1957 she crossed over to pop fame with her huge hit “Lucky Lips.” “She was the singer when I was a girl,” Aretha exclaims. “It was her records I liked, along with the Clovers [‘Love Potion No. 9'], Clyde McPhatter [‘A Lover's Question']— and these were all Atlantic [Records] artists, too. But Ruth Brown was my favorite.”

Soon afterward, Aretha began toying with the idea of becoming an R&B singer as well. Her fascination was fueled by a close friend of hers who went from gospel fame to mainstream pop success. Aretha had followed his transition from singing at New Bethel Baptist Church to making gospel records, to becoming an R&B star, to his transformation into a hit-making pop star. Her friend's success opened her eyes to what was possible for her own singing career. His name was Sam Cooke.

Like so many of the gospel singing stars—including Mahalia Jackson—Sam Cooke came from Chicago. It wasn't uncommon for many Chicago stars to drive over to Detroit to appear at Reverend C. L. Franklin's church. When he was still in high school, Sam began singing gospel songs with his brother in a group called the Highway Q.C.'s, and in the 1950s he was the lead singer of the religious group called the Soul Stirrers. Sam made several recordings including “Touch the Hem of His Garment” and “Pilgrim of Sorrow.”