by David Ritz
“This was the Quincy Jones that was getting his feet wet with soul and R-and-B,” said Cecil. “Ree and I saw Q as a jazz cat. We wanted a jazz album. He said he wanted to use some of the best jazz musicians, like Phil Woods and Joe Farrell.”
“That’s when the delays started,” said Wexler. “The delays drove me crazy. We were used to doing an Aretha Franklin album in a couple of weeks. Get the songs together, get the musicians, the backup girls, book the studio, and bang out ten songs in a few sessions. That’s how Aretha works best. She’s a very assertive recording artist. She likes to jump on the material. Deliberation isn’t her style. Procrastination on the part of the producer does not help.”
“Q had lots on his plate,” Cecil explained. “He was juggling lots of projects—writing for the movies and TV as well as producing the studio. I love the man but never felt that we got his full attention. I’m not saying that Aretha didn’t contribute to the delays. There were more than a couple of times when she canceled West Coast trips. Her fear of flying was building up. When we did arrive in LA for the meetings, Q was always the most hospitable and loving man you can imagine. But his concept was changing. He was talking less about a straight-ahead jazz album and more about a mixed bag—a jazz tune, an R-and-B tune, maybe a show tune. Aretha said she had several originals that she wanted to include. Q liked the idea. Wasn’t long before we were all over the place. Wexler was concerned. He was calling me every day, asking, ‘What the fuck is taking so long?’ ‘Take it easy, Jerry,’ I’d say. ‘The record is developing.’ ‘I don’t want it developing,’ he’d say, ‘I want it delivered.’ ”
What was delivered from the sessions that started in the spring and didn’t conclude till late summer was disappointing. That Quincy/Aretha project, Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky), was Aretha’s first Atlantic album that did not land in the top twenty-five on the pop chart. In Quincy’s autobiography, Q, he failed to give an account of his time in the studio with Aretha. The record got only a passing mention.
Neither fish nor fowl, it’s an unfocused hodgepodge of unrelated songs. The cover art, conceived by Ken Cunningham, is amateurish and bizarre—a strange sketch of an angelic Aretha, a dope needle, a black matador, and Quincy sleeping in the clouds. Aretha told interviewers that she was baffled by the drawings.
Two of Aretha’s originals—the title track and “So Swell When You’re Well”—are subpar. Her rendition of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s “Somewhere” from West Side Story is overwrought and strained. When she sings James Moody’s bebop classic “Moody’s Mood,” her vocalese feels rushed and uncertain. And yet for all its faults, Hey Now Hey cannot be ignored. Four of its tracks are fine. And one of those four—“Angel,” written by sister Carolyn—is among the powerful and poignant singles in Aretha’s career. It was the album’s only hit.
Aretha’s simple and sincere spoken introduction to “Angel” has become as much a part of the song as the melody or lyric. It’s the one song she has sung—and continues to sing—at her every concert. She never fails to start with her prologue:
“I got a call the other day,” she says. “It was my sister Carolyn saying, ‘Aretha, come by when you can. I’ve got something that I want to say.’ And when I got there, she said, ‘You know, rather than go through a long-drawn-out thing, I think the melody on the box will help me explain.’ ”
The opening line—“Gotta find me an angel, to fly away with me”—is, in the words of sister Erma, “a prayer with wings. It’s Carolyn’s most beautiful song—and that’s saying a lot because my sister wrote dozens of beautiful songs. But ‘Angel’ took it to a higher level—to the Curtis Mayfield/Marvin Gaye level, where there’s really something divine about her composition. I can’t tell you how proud we were of Carolyn. Daddy, Cecil, myself, and especially Aretha realized that she had finally realized the potential of her God-given gift.”
Aretha’s one successful original is “Sister from Texas.”
“She wrote it for Esther Phillips,” Cecil told me. “When Ree won her Grammy for Young, Gifted, and Black, she gave it to Esther, who that same year was nominated in the same category—Best R-and-B Album—for From a Whisper to a Cry, a great record that Aretha loved. Esther had fought off a lot of demons at that point in her life and the struggle wasn’t over. Like Aretha, Esther had been a child star. Aretha had deep respect for her and wanted to help the sister in every way she could. It was one of those times when Aretha showed the love and generosity that I knew to be at the core of her character.”
Her exposition of Bobby Womack’s “That’s the Way I Feel About Cha” is a study in overdubbing. A year earlier, Marvin Gaye had layered and harmonized his many voices in What’s Going On, and the impact was immediate. In covering Womack’s big hit from his Communication album, Aretha surely has Marvin in mind. She shadows herself to chilling effect. The intensity of three or four Arethas coming at you at once—especially out of that fat, kicked-back Bobby Womack pocket—is thrilling.
The final thrill on Hey Now Hey is Quincy’s reconstructed and newly expanded treatment of Avery Parrish’s “After Hours,” a classic 1940 instrumental hit for Erskine Hawkins that Aretha had learned as a little girl. When Reverend Franklin woke his prodigal daughter to play for his party guests back in Detroit, “After Hours” was one of his requests.
“It’s essentially a jam,” said Billy Preston, who played the original Avery Parrish part on the track. “I start off just duplicating the record. But then Q wrote this killer big-band chart that kicks in. I mean, it’s like a Basie chart. All Q did was tell Ree, ‘Sing the blues, baby.’ That’s all he needed to say ’cause Sista turns it out. She’s making up the words as she goes along. She’s moaning low. And before long, she’s screaming, she’s soaring, she turns in the best straight-up blues singing I’ve heard since Ray Charles. Funny thing is that at the end of what was supposed to be a pure jazz album, Aretha turns in about the best blues performance anyone’s ever done since the blues were invented somewhere in the middle of a muddy cotton field in Mississippi.”
In mid-June, before completing Hey Now Hey, Aretha gave a triumphant performance at Chicago’s Arie Theater.
“I’ve never seen her better,” said Ruth Bowen. “I was a little worried because she wasn’t exactly happy with the record she was making with Quincy. It was taking forever and the lack of progress put her in a bad mood. You wouldn’t know that, though, by her demeanor onstage.”
In the Chicago Tribune, Lynn Van Matre wrote about the concert:
“Even done up in a white satin dress with rhinestones for the first of two concerts Saturday, she wasn’t exactly pretty. But more important, she was beautiful, and even with her 12-piece recording orchestra and three backup singers in saris on stage with her, there was never any doubt who was the center of attention… and why.”
In the same edition of the Tribune, there was mention of her scheduled performance at the outdoor “Jail Show of 1972 for more than 3,200 inmates of Cook County Jail.”
“Ken Cunningham has a heart for the downtrodden and less fortunate,” said Cecil. “He was always arranging for Aretha to sing benefits and concerts for those who were ordinarily not privileged to see her. In that respect, Ken was a great influence. His political conscience went along perfectly with Aretha’s and mine. I remember that was the summer that Nixon was running for reelection. My good friend Marvin Gaye put out a highly political single called ‘You’re the Man.’ Like everything Marvin did, it was shot through with biting irony—a jab at the establishment. Aretha and I must have listened to that two dozen times in a row. That’s when she told me that she really wanted to collaborate with Marvin. Wasn’t long after that when I ran into Marvin in Detroit. ‘Any time, bro,’ he said. ‘I’m ready.’ For years we went back and forth, trying to make the arrangements. We were always running in different directions and it never happened. That still bothers me. I can only imagine what kind of music my sister and Marvin would have made together.”
Jet reported that in August, back in New York after her recording sessions with Quincy Jones, Aretha was into a vigorous cycling routine in Central Park. She told the magazine that she had embraced a new diet and exercise regimen that required her to drink lots of water mixed with vinegar and honey.
A watershed moment arrived in September with the release of Aretha’s version of “Wholy Holy,” the first single from Amazing Grace. When the record failed to climb the charts, doubts began to set in. Would the project prove to be a commercial failure?
“After Aretha’s huge success in the R-and-B and pop market,” said Wexler, “[Atlantic] thought promoting a gospel album would disappoint her secular fans. There was also a feeling that once you leave the field of gospel music—as Sam Cooke had—there’s no going back. So when ‘Wholy Holy’ failed to chart in any meaningful way, the naysayers had a field day. But not for long. Fans didn’t look to Amazing Grace for singles. As it turned out, they embraced it in its entirety, as an organic and whole listening experience. In less than six weeks, it sold more than a million copies. That’s unheard-of for a gospel or R-and-B album—especially one without a hit single. This record was on its way to making history. The reason had to do with nothing but quality. When quality is this fantastic, a record sells, no matter what genre. Take Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. No one would ever believe a jazz album would sell in the multimillions. But that particular jazz album is simply so good—the compositions, the playing of Miles, Coltrane, and Cannonball, the new modal sound—that it outstripped anything before or since. What Kind of Blue is to jazz, Amazing Grace is to gospel. It set a new standard.”
This was the same moment—the summer of 1972—when Wexler was hearing the final masters from Hey Now Hey.
“Naturally, I loved ‘Angel,’ ” Wexler said. “Everyone loved ‘Angel,’ and everyone knew ‘Angel’ was a hit. Carolyn saved Aretha’s ass on that record. If it weren’t for ‘Angel,’ the album would have been a total wash. Even with ‘Angel,’ the album was still seen as a flop. It slowed down Aretha’s momentum. Careers have trajectories, and, ever since joining Atlantic, Aretha’s was up, up, up. Quincy Jones has won his fabled place in the history of the music. His big band was wonderful. His small band arrangements for Dinah Washington were great. As a pop guy, he did Lesley Gore’s ‘It’s My Party,’ and you don’t need for me to tell you about the incredible work he did with Michael Jackson. When it came to Aretha, though, he didn’t serve her well. Maybe it was her fault. Maybe she was back on booze. Maybe she knocked him off his jazz course. I don’t know. All I do know, though, is that the issuance of that album represents the end of her golden age on Atlantic.”
Wexler was right. Aretha never recaptured the mojo or momentum of her first remarkable series of albums at Atlantic. Hammond and his colleagues had eventually run out of fertile ideas for the artist, and Wexler and his colleagues were on the verge of doing the same.
21. SHOP AROUND
Aretha and Ken Cunningham were always hatching grand plans,” said Ruth Bowen. “He convinced her that he could direct a film that she could star in. If Barbra Streisand could do it, so could Aretha. Aretha had a thing about Barbra Streisand. Because they’d started out together on Columbia, she always saw her as competition. Ree saw all female singers as competition. Because Barbra had a big soaring voice, she was seen as super-competition. Then, when Barbra busted out with Funny Girl and won an Academy Award, Aretha saw herself doing the same. Next comes Diana Ross. When Berry Gordy had Diana play Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues, Aretha had the same reaction—why not me? ‘Well, honey,’ I said, ‘because you don’t have Berry Gordy. Diana does.’ Aretha saw herself as being outdone by women who didn’t have any more talent than her. If they could get a movie, she could too. Nothing wrong with that attitude. In show business, a competitive spirit is good. It makes for motivation, and—for someone who didn’t always relish working—Aretha could use all the motivation she could get. But Ken wasn’t always realistic about what it meant to get a movie made. He just didn’t have the financial muscle. He was her man, though, and even though I believe in talking straight with my clients, early on I learned that straight talk never beats pillow talk. Pillow talk wins every time.”
The October 12, 1972, issue of Jet mentioned that Cunningham and Franklin were scouting locations in Spain “for a film that he will direct and which she will star in.” The movie never happened. The magazine later reported that Aretha was “taking the first half of the year off from concert dates to help friend and confidant Ken Cunningham put together a movie on Black women.”
While the film projects were never realized, Aretha kept up her public appearances and joined Isaac Hayes, Gladys Knight, the Jackson Five, and Donny Hathaway in Chicago at the PUSH Expo ’72 headed by Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Her personal appearance was the subject of a Jet article addressing her “mini meals” diet plan. She said she had lost twenty-five pounds and was close to meeting her goal—135 pounds. She also said, “Well, I’m not going to get that small. I’m going to leave enough there for somebody to grab hold to.” Accompanying the article was a photo of Franklin in a bikini in Nassau.
The magazine also noted that Cecil was shopping for a new Aretha Franklin record deal. With her Atlantic contract up on March 31, he was reportedly talking to ABC-Dunhill, Columbia, and Warner Brothers. Her price tag was $5 million.
“I had some doubts about our bargaining position,” Cecil told me. “Of course, Ree had this incredible run of hits. But the truth is that her only platinum-plus album was Amazing Grace. She had a great string of singles that somehow hadn’t turned into blockbuster LP sales. And then, on the heels of Hey Now Hey, which wasn’t looking all that good, I felt we were a little vulnerable. On the other hand, Ruth and Aretha felt we were in a strong position.”
“Atlantic said they’d give her three million,” said Ruth. “I said that was nothing. She needed twice that. Aretha was behind me but Cecil was a little cautious. I told Cecil to start talking to other labels. That would get Ahmet and Wexler good and nervous. In the early sixties, they had lost Ray Charles to ABC Paramount. That’s when Ray went on to his big country hits. His leaving cost Atlantic a fortune. I didn’t see those boys making the same mistake twice.”
“I didn’t like how Cecil began making the rounds,” said Wexler. “I didn’t appreciate that. Of course Aretha was a free agent and entitled to see what was out there. But after all was said and done, Atlantic was where she had rediscovered herself. Her tremendous talent notwithstanding, our input was critical to her fabulous success. She didn’t reinvent herself in a vacuum. That reinvention happened in the specific culture of Atlantic Records. Surely we deserved special consideration.”
“Aretha’s first choice was to stay at Atlantic,” said Cecil. “She felt that she owed them both gratitude and loyalty. But business is business. In this case, I followed Ruth’s lead. I worked hard to make Wexler worry.”
“The guy who worried me most was Clive Davis,” said Wexler. “He was running Columbia. Now, Clive is shrewd. He’s the guy who took Columbia from a classical-and-Broadway-musical-cast-recording-driven label—they’d made a fortune on My Fair Lady—to the era of rock and roll. Clive had gone to the Monterey Pop Festival and heard the future in
Janis Joplin. He saw the money in rock and roll. In the early seventies, he also saw the money in rhythm and blues. That’s when he went after a bigger share of the black music market. He signed Earth, Wind, and Fire and also cut a distribution deal with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff at Philly International, who were terrific writers and producers. Clive saw that Philly International—red hot with the O’Jays and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes—was positioned to be the new Motown. I have no doubt that Gamble and Huff had the chops to produce Aretha, but there was no way I was going to be outbid.”
“When Wexler put four million on the table,” said Cecil, “my inclination was to take it. After all, Aretha had originally signed with the label for twenty-five thousand. Sure, she was a big earner, and sure, she had decades of more hits in her, but Atlantic had sweetened their original offer by a million. As usual, I asked Ruth Bowen’s advice.”
“I told Cecil and Aretha both, ‘Stick to your guns,’ ” said Ruth. “ ‘Atlantic is no longer an independent label. Atlantic is owned by Warner, a major corporation with deep pockets. You’re into a new era. Demand the six million.’ ”
Aretha got the six million.
“Ahmet and I felt like we had no choice,” said Wexler. “We were haunted by the memory of losing Ray Charles and weren’t about to let that happen again. We convinced the brass at Warner to do the deal. Champagne all around. Aretha took the money, bought a glamorous town house on the Upper East Side on Eighty-Eighth Street between Fifth and Madison and hired a decorator and went to town.”
