The Queen Of Soul’s Greatest Live Hits: An Aretha Appreciation

(Photo by Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images) –
Queenly: Aretha Franklin playing the piano during a concert at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, circa 1970s.

“Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me”

Even Richard Nixon was uttering that catch phrase on “Laugh In” at the time. It’s hard to adequately describe what it was like to hear Aretha Franklin spitting those words out of your transistor radio during that summer of 1967 in New York City as a lad of 15 hooked to the Top 40 of AM giants WABC and WMCA. I learned only later that those were her back-up singers, but still… In the midst of the British Invasion and incipient psychedelia from the west coast – in between The Beatles and The Doors – smack in the middle of raging civil rights and Vietnam War protests came as if from another planet this blast of urgency, a cry for liberation, a salacious come-on ladled into a take-no-prisoners demand.

“What you want, baby, I got it/What you need, do you know I got it?”

And all she’s asking for is “a little respect when you get home.” And, if that’s too hard to understand, she’ll spell it out for you…

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T”

One thing Aretha Franklin commanded from virtually the time she was born was that. Like Michael Jackson, who shamelessly copped the regality of the Queen of Soul with his own King of Pop self-proclamation, was a child prodigy with a powerful father, in her case the progressive Baptist minister and civil rights activist C.L. Franklin. She’d spend the rest of her life trying to find a man who could live up to him, and pretty much failed each time.

With the possible exception of James Brown, Aretha Franklin was the first, proudly roots R&B artist to cross over to a mainstream white audience with the newly coined “soul music.” When she went from Columbia Records, who tried to polish her into that kind of artist, to Atlantic, Jerry Wexler had the genius to present Aretha just as she was – a gospel singer who turned that joyous vision into something deeper, grittier and just as elemental.

Walter Iooss Jr./Getty Images – Aretha Franklin
Madison Square Garden, 1968

“Because she was brought up in the church, her voice always expressed an essential optimism of praise and worship, a joyful noise,” her biographer David Ritz recently told Pollstar. “But she also had the blues of a hard life.”

With “Respect,” Aretha Franklin staked her claim to royalty, a perennial anthem to not just the civil rights movement of her father, but the incipient feminism of the ‘60s, and by extension, to all subjugated individuals no matter their race, religion or gender. And while Franklin’s magnificent voice set the standard for the multi-octave gospel melismas which have dominated the post-American Idol world and influenced several generations of pop, jazz, blues and soul singers from Chaka Khan, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey to Mary J. Blige, Christina Aguilera, Adele, Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce. Like Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, she mixed the sacred and the profane in one stimulating paradox.

Beyond her ability to make songs like Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and Carole King’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman” her own, Aretha was underrated as a songwriter (she either wrote or co-wrote some of her biggest hits, including “Think,” “Rock Steady” and “Day Dreaming”), an expert piano player and an arranger.

“She came into the studio with her own charts, her own harmonies, her own grooves,” observed Ritz. “Aretha Franklin saw the big picture, she was a visionary, a producer. Even Jerry Wexler told me she should have been credited that way. That’s a big gift even if you’re not a world-class vocalist.”

Like Michael Jackson, Franklin’s outsized personality – her fear of flying, her sporadic concert cancellations, her relentless attempt to control the narrative of her life – overshadowed the music, but now that she’s gone, we can now fully concentrate on her transcendent songs and performances and forget about the quirks that some say made her difficult to work with.

Grammy telecast producer Ken Ehrlich summed it up: “Her legacy, no matter how the musical landscape changes, will endure, and those of us lucky enough to have had her cross our paths will always remember those moments when she would take off the wrap, head to the stage and the hurricane would begin as soon as the downbeat hit.”

Aretha Franklin’s place on the musical Mount Rushmore is secured as the first woman performer inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while topping Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Singers of all time. Below just a few of her greatest performances.

“Precous Lord,” 1968, heart-breaking cry of love sung at the Memorial Service for a slain Dr. Martin Luther King. Ths gospel classic was a favorite of Dr. King’s.
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“Nessum Dorma” at the 1998 Grammy Awards: Subbing last-minute for an ailing Luciano Pavarotti, The Queen adds opera to her arsenal as perhaps the greatest of all Grammy’s Magic Moments.
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“(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” at 2015 Kennedy Center Honors: During this tribute to Carole King, Aretha brought tears to President Obama’s eyes with this rendition.
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“Respect,’ Feb. 16, 1968, Cobo Hall, Detroit: an incendiary live performance of her classic hit performed at her hometown’s Aretha Franklin Day celebrations, attended by Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“Think” in The Blues Brothers movie: Aretha brings the movie to an absolute stop when her hash-slinging waitress shows off her acting prowess before launching into a searing set-piece with sidekicks Aykroyd and Belushi.
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“Rolling in the Deep”/”Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” on Late Night with David Letterman, September 2014: Aretha comes on late-night to promote her final album, “Aretha Franklin Sings The Great Diva Classics,” completely blowing away the audience at the venerable Ed Sullivan Theater in the process.

“Rock Steady” performed on the “Flip Wilson Show” in 1971 with Franklin’s preternaturally brilliant soul croon on full display on yet another of her stone-cold classic cuts.
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“(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman” at 1998 “Divas Live” on VH1: The first installment of this long-running series found her joined by fellow divas Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan and Shania Twain, at once paying homage and showing who’s boss.
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