The gospel-truth, if you believe most of the history books: Aretha Franklin didn’t really find her true voice until she began working with producer Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records in 1967.
"My idea was to make good tracks, use the best players, put Aretha back on piano and let the lady wail," Wexler wrote.
But the Aretha before and after her soul golden age often gets short shrift. In his latest book, “The Fan Who Knew Too Much” Aretha Heilbut argues persuasively that even before Aretha walked into a studio to record with Wexler, she had already begun to change the game for women, African-Americans and music culture.
As the daughter of one of the most powerful ministers in America, Rev. C.L. Franklin, Aretha already had a platform at Detroit’s New Bethel Baptist Church to showcase her extraordinary multi-octave, multi-hued voice.
At 14, she was not just recording gospel, but imbuing it with drama and
depth of feeling that were miles behind her years. Still, in her late
teens she was touring the gospel circuit alongside the Staple Singers
and Sammie Bryant second-billed to her father, the star preacher.
She signed to Columbia
Records in 1960, a move widely interpreted as her leaving gospel to
pursue wealth and fame on the wider stage of pop. But her father approved of
the changeover, and his voice carried immense weight with his numerous
followers. Franklin herself made a persuasive case in 1961, when she
framed her transition in the context of the emerging civil-rights
movement, a viable means of expression that didn’t repudiate her gospel
roots so much as expand them.
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