Vale Aretha (1942 - 2018)

Aretha Franklin's singing was so special, so spiritual, because she grew up singing in her father's church.  She soars, she touches the soul.

Most of the tributes that will pour in on her death will focus on her well-known songs (the BBC overnight was endlessly rehashing extracts of I Say A Little Prayer, Respect, and Natural Woman).  Few will demonstrate why they think she was unique.  Here's a good example: Call Me.

Released in 1970, this performance comes from the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1971.  She especially shines towards the end of the song.

Sadly, it's not her best performance of this song to be captured on tape.  That one was available online in 2011, but has probably been removed for copyright reasons.  It was a television performance circa 1971; the audience was seated around tables - and it's not the one on the Tom Jones program, which you can still find online.

For me, her other most notable high point was the 1973 single Angel.  Also worthwhile amongst many others is her recording of The Band's The Weight, which is also quite a spiritual song.

Discovered 70s gems 5: Aretha Franklin - Call Me

Oh well, here's Aretha Franklin.  I sneaked her in only because I found it was released as a single in 1970.  Again, I never heard it until decades later.

I could argue that this is her best, but any way you look at it the performance itself is unarguably stellar, liquid gold.

Postscript: Calling Aretha the Queen of Soul can be a bit fraught: some of her performances are good, but they are not all outstanding.  But if you listen to the right ones, carefully enough, it is clear she is Queen.  Another recommendation is 1973's Angel.  Not as big as the follow-up (Until You Come Back To Me), I still heard it plenty at the time, but paid little attention.  But Angel is, however, yet another example of how Aretha can outshine them all.

Jerry Wexler's influence on music

Reading the paper last night, I learnt of the death of Jerry Wexler a few days ago. Not too well-known outside music circles, his influence is still very widely felt, in particular as executive and producer at Atlantic Records. Coincidentally, at the time of reading, I was listening to an Atlantic album: the eponymous Bette Midler (a protege of Wexler's partner Ahmet Ertegün, whose passing I noted in December 2006).

Although Wexler wasn't a founder of Atlantic (he boarded in 1953, insisting on partnership), he had already made his mark in music by then. Inter alia, he was credited with the neologism "rhythm and blues" in 1949, when he renamed Billboard magazine's black music chart, formerly known as "race records".


Always keen on black music, he was instrumental in the careers of Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin in particular, although not so keen on the whitey music of Led Zeppelin and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. He had, however, been keen to sign the little-known Elvis Presley, but lacked the $10,000 to clinch the deal.

It was Wexler who was represented in Ray, the biopic of Ray Charles, as the latter's record executive and producer.

He was also a keen proponent of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, white Alabama session musicians who he used to great effect for Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, amongst many others. He recorded many seminal works there, for example coming up with the rhythm track for Pickett's In The Midnight Hour, as well as producing Frankin's Respect, I Say A Little Prayer, and many others.

Atlantic also signed Boz Scaggs for one album in 1968; coupled with the Muscle Shoals team, this resulted in one of Duane Allman's greatest recordings, on Scaggs' Loan Me A Dime.

Wexler left Atlantic in 1975, which putatively signalled the end of his career peak. That period would see his involvement with Dire Straits, George Michael, and Bob Dylan's born-again album, Slow Train Coming. But his work over the three prior decades had already altered the course of popular music.


Further reading: overviews of Atlantic Records here and here.