by David Ritz
Six weeks later, the deal was off. On December 3, 1977, under an article headlined “U.K. Pact Flap Axes Aretha Gig,” Billboard noted that a “controversial contract flap, promising still-to-come legal repercussions, resulted in Aretha Franklin canceling three SRO dates at the London Palladium” less than twenty-four hours before the scheduled opening.
“I was incensed,” said Kruger, “because I had no warning and was given no real reasons for the cancellations. There were some last-minute demands about stretch limos and extravagant hotel suites that I was only too happy to agree to. But then I was told that she wanted a bigger fee to match what a promoter had promised her to play Paris. She also wanted to eliminate a date and demanded a chartered jet to fly her and her entourage over the pond. This was after contracts were signed. Outrageous! These new costs were prohibitive. Then came word that she didn’t fancy working in England during the winter. Could we move the dates to the spring? No, the dates were set in stone. By this time, I understood that she acted out of pure whimsy. She simply didn’t feel like playing London. Well, I’d had it. I turned the matter over to my solicitors.”
“The lawsuits came, as I knew they would,” said Ruth Bowen. “The lawsuits cost Aretha a pretty penny, and she blamed me. She claimed that I had booked her for more dates than she had agreed to. But the number of dates never changed. What changed was her mind. At this point she was far more interested in pursuing her romance with Glynn Turman than playing London.”
At the end of December, Jet ran a photo of Aretha and Glynn on a plane to France. Cecil was shown seated behind them.
During her concert in Paris, she sang “La Vie en Rose.”
“Josephine Baker had sung it there,” said Cecil, “and so had Louis Armstrong. But when even the sternest critic heard Aretha do it, they forgot about the earlier version. I’ll never forget this one cat running up to me and saying, ‘Tell your sister to move to France. She’ll be loved here more than anywhere in the world.’ I did tell that to Aretha and I know she believed it to be true.”
Billboard’s review was far less kind: “Aretha Franklin disappointed here at a show at the Palais des Sports, after an absence of 10 years. Though the hall is not ideal for this kind of soul concert, critics and audiences felt she paid more attention to the television cameras than to the paying audience.”
Although in coming years she pined for France—the cuisine, the fashion, the adoring audience—she never made it back.
23. FAIRY-TALE PRINCESS
I was living alone in LA when my apartment got robbed,” said Carolyn. “That shook me up. Aretha was kind enough to invite me to live there. By then time had healed much of the hurt from the Sparkle fiasco. Our sisterhood had recovered.
“I moved in when Ree’s romance with Glynn Turman was blossoming to full flower. Glynn was great—smart, artistic, socially conscious, an altogether wonderful man. But I wasn’t optimistic about their relationship. Aretha had her four boys and Glynn had two boys and a girl of his own. That comprised a very large and complicated family dynamic. Plus Glynn’s career drive is as powerful as Ree’s. They’re both extremely driven people. The question was, Could they drive in the same lane or would they drive over each other? Glynn’s insider role in the movie industry interested Aretha, and so did his reputation as an acting teacher. She was ready to be taught—or at least she said she was. But I don’t think she lasted for more than one or two of his classes. Glynn’s method was to mine the depths of your emotions and bring them to the surface. He has his actors go all out. That was Aretha’s singing style but in the context of a class, she’s way too self-conscious to express any kind of vulnerability. If anything, she guards her feelings. She’s got that tall protective wall around her. She might have been feeding the magazine stories about how she and Glynn were going to be the new Hollywood power couple, but I just didn’t see them living happily ever after.”
“There’s something very sweet about my sister’s vision of herself as a princess in a fairy tale,” said Erma. “She meets a successful and handsome man and, in her mind, turns him into a brave knight on a black stallion. He’s going to carry her off, slay all her dragons, and solve all her problems. It’s the way a little girl thinks, not a grown woman. In that way, Aretha never grew up.”
In March of 1978, Aretha announced plans to marry Turman.
“Because she and Ted White had basically run off to marry,” said her cousin Brenda, “Aretha felt that she had missed out on a storybook wedding. She was going to make up for that with Glynn. No one loves to throw herself a party more than Aretha—she’s been doing that her whole life—but she told me that this would be the party to end all parties. In fact, there’d be two huge parties. First they’d get married by her dad at New Bethel in Detroit and then come back to California and have another blowout for their Hollywood friends.”
The wedding took place on April 11.
“Aretha produced her own wedding,” said Erma, “but it almost didn’t come off. She’d given Glynn a prenup to sign. He agreed to sign but then said he’d misplaced it. Apparently another copy was sent.
“An hour before the ceremony, though, the agreement has not been delivered. Ree and I are waiting with Daddy in the pastor’s study. Ree is incensed. Reporters and photographers have come from all over the world. Spectators are lined up and down the block. The church is packed. But my sister is unmoved. ‘No prenup,’ she says, ‘no wedding.’ ‘Will she really call it off?’ I ask my father. ‘You know your sister,’ says Daddy. ‘She’s likely to call off anything.’ We’re holding our breath. A few minutes before she’s due to walk down the aisle, the signed prenup arrives.
“It was a glorious event. Lou Gossett was Glynn’s best man. I was the maid of honor. The Four Tops sang Stevie’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely.’ There were at least eight bridesmaids and eight groomsmen. Ree wore a fabulous off-white silk-and-mink gown with a seven-foot-long train. She walked down the aisle to a Carolyn composition, ‘I Take This Walk with Thee.’ She had the choir singing all her favorite gospel songs. She had cousin Brenda singing ‘Amazing Grace.’ She had Big Mama crying her eyes out. The wedding cake was a work of art—eight feet tall, four tiers.”
A week later, the party continued in Los Angeles. Aretha rented out the ballroom at the Beverly Hilton. A thirty-five-piece orchestra played arrangements on personal loan from Barry White. The Four Tops flew out to LA to entertain the thousand-plus guests, as did Lon Fontaine’s dance troupe. Jet reported that “hundreds and hundreds of pounds of the choicest filet mignon, giant silver tubs of shrimp, and an array of Indian foods and French desserts” were served and that “the evening’s only sour note was that somebody stole four cages of live doves that were intended to symbolize the newlyweds’ happiness.”
A few weeks later, Aretha was telling the press that she and Glynn had written a song together—“If You Feel the Need, I’m Your Speed”—and a theme song to a movie in which they would star.
In May, Aretha was in New York, where she appeared at Carnegie Hall. She did three extremely brief sets—the first was dedicated to her hits and to covers like “You Light Up My Life”; for the second, she appeared in a Josephine Baker costume singing Josephine Baker–related songs, like “Brazil” and “La Vie en Rose”; and the third she devoted to gospel.
Aretha told the press that she had invited some movie producers who were interested in having her play Baker in a biopic. The gospel numbers were in tribute to Miss Clara Ward, who, according to Aretha, had the courage to sing church songs in jazz clubs and even Las Vegas casinos.
In June, Aretha took out an ad in Variety. ARETHA in big block letters was plastered across a full page. Below were the words Carnegie Hall—Gross $126,000. Reverend C. Franklin was listed as her manager and Howard Brandy as her press agent. No mention of Ruth Bowen.
“I was out of her good graces for several years,” said Ruth. “This was because of her refusal to admit that she had agreed to those dates with Jeffrey Kruger in England. Th
e lawsuit cost her a small fortune and she blamed it on me. I kept my cool and realized all I needed to do was bide my time. Aretha is the kind of artist who will always spend more than she makes. That means she’ll always need to work to live. And because I have a unique ability to book extremely lucrative dates, I knew it was only a matter of time before she and I would be doing business again.”
In July, Ebony ran another Aretha/Glynn puff piece: “They look like a pair of happy kids, but they have seven of their own. Aretha denied that, despite her weight gain, she was pregnant.” There was more talk of her taking Glynn’s acting classes and of their plans to produce a movie in which they both would star.
When Essence published its own puff piece about the wonders of the two-career Franklin/Turman marriage, Glynn gave a hint of the trouble that would come from her star shining brighter than his.
“It’s a thing of being a prideful man raised in this society with the idea of being a breadwinner with the head-of-the-household thing,” he said. “I’m not used to being referred to as anyone’s husband. I’m used to a woman being referred to as my woman… After I had worked 17 years in the business at the time we got married, suddenly being recognized as Aretha’s husband was a heavy burden to carry.”
Aretha disagreed, saying, “I don’t think it’s so hard.”
Glynn responded: “But you’re not in my shoes, baby.”
Aretha’s summer appearance in Vegas included her impressions—Gladys Knight’s “Midnight Train to Georgia,” Mavis Staples’s “Respect Yourself,” and Diana Ross’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
Back in Los Angeles, she agreed to attend a charity event arranged by her brother at LA’s Good Shepherd Baptist Church.
“Daddy flew in for the occasion,” said Cecil. “We were set for a special evening, but unfortunately Aretha had forgotten about the commitment. She wanted out but it was too late. The result was not particularly pleasant.”
Billboard’s Jean Williams reported on July 22 that “Aretha Franklin was the special guest of honor, but Aretha did the least to make the occasion special… She sang with no enthusiasm as the audience whispered, ‘What’s wrong with her?’ while others were overheard to say, ‘She acts as if she’s angry with the world.’ ”
“It was a period when she was angry a good deal of the time,” said Cecil, “because record sales were off so drastically. Sweet Passion was pretty much a flop, so we decided to go back to Curtis Mayfield. Sparkle was such a hit, we figured that a second helping of an Aretha/Curtis dish was sure to work. Besides, Curtis took the same hard line against disco that Aretha did. They were both set on turning the tide. But in the end, the tide was too strong and the sessions weren’t all that happy. Aretha was convinced that Curtis was giving her his B-list songs, and Curtis didn’t like the one original that Aretha demanded go on the record, the ‘I’m Your Speed’ song she wrote with Glynn.”
A rare Curtis miscue, the second Mayfield-produced Aretha album, Almighty Fire, lacks fire. The songs are missing the sturdy soul underpinnings that mark Curtis’s best efforts. Aretha realized some of her most impassioned vocals on Sparkle, but this time around, she sounds detached and uninterested. Without a single hit, the album sank like a stone.
With the exception of Sparkle, Aretha’s previous seven albums had been commercial failures. In marketing terms, she was clearly in danger of becoming an irrelevant artist.
This was 1978, the year of the Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever.
“I tried to tell Aretha the Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ owed as much to Marvin Gaye as they did to disco,” said Cecil. “I heard it as a modern take on dance-crazy R-and-B. I kept telling her that, whether she liked it or not, the groove changes and we have to change with it.”
The rhythm-and-blues groove is one of pop music’s most elusive motifs. The groove emanates from the street. As the street changes, so does the groove. Those changes come fast. R&B has always been a streetwise fashion-first music. Few R&B artists or producers have been able to keep a current groove for more than a few years. In the forties, Louis Jordan had it for a while. In the fifties Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Ike Turner, and Ray Charles each came up with original grooves. The happy-go-lucky Motown producers of the sixties, along with Stax men Dave Porter and Isaac Hayes, were superb groove masters. Curtis hit the right groove for Aretha in Sparkle, but as the seventies were winding down, disco was still winding up—and Mayfield, at least in his second collaboration with Aretha, missed the mark.
“It had been some time since I had been at Atlantic,” said Wexler. “I was working as a freelance producer and talent scout for Mo Ostin at Warner Records. But of course I never stopped tracking Aretha’s career and listening to her records. I’d never call her to give advice—not because I didn’t have any but because I knew she really wasn’t interested. That’s why I was surprised when she called me during the depths of her dry period to ask me what kind of record I thought she should make. I spoke to her about the relationship between Ella Fitzgerald and her manager/producer Norman Granz. Granz was the one who masterminded Ella’s masterful albums in which she sang the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Duke Ellington, and all the others. I suggested a similar strategy for Aretha. There’s no reason why she couldn’t sing a Duke Ellington songbook as well—not to mention Percy Mayfield, Bobby Womack, or Isaac Hayes. She could avoid chasing fashion and concentrate on time-capsule material. The idea of her and Ray Charles collaborating on a duets album was something I would have killed to produce. He did it with Betty Carter and there was no reason he couldn’t do it with Aretha. She said she’d think about it, but I don’t think she ever did. Ray hadn’t had a hit in years, and, as far as Aretha was concerned, that was reason enough to disqualify him.”
“If you look back at the early Atlantic stuff,” said Cecil, “it’s both classic and commercial. That’s always been Aretha’s aim. She always wants a hit but never wants to compromise quality. With disco, she didn’t see the quality. She spent a couple of years bad-mouthing the fad. I remember one evening when we met up with Marvin Gaye in LA. Marvin had the same complaints about disco as Ree. It was ruining R-and-B. It had no soul. But then Marvin did ‘Got to Give It Up,’ a disco hit. Typical Marvin, it was a song about how he hated to dance. That was his way of bending to current fashion. Aretha said she wouldn’t but in the end she did. She went out there and made a disco record.”
24. THE HUSTLE
Aretha never admitted that she had, in fact, decided to do disco. During our discussions, she clung to the position that during that dance-craze era, she remained one of the few artists to buck the trend. When shown a copy of La Diva, the album in which she presented herself as a disco queen singing disco music directed by one of the most celebrated disco producers, she said the record was not disco at all, merely modern rhythm and blues.
Her search for a disco hit had begun with Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, architects of Chic, one of disco’s more elegant aggregations.
“They came in with completed tracks that were smokin’,” said Cecil. “I thought it was a slam dunk, but Ree had reservations. She thought the songs needed retooling and she also had some tunes of her own that she wanted included. Nile and Bernard were very respectful of Aretha, but at that point they were riding high. They had those huge Chic hits like ‘Good Times.’ Aretha needed them far more than they needed her. They were happy to produce her—everyone wants to produce Aretha Franklin—but on their terms, not hers. Those discussions didn’t get very far.
“The crazy thing is that the Rodgers/Edwards songs that Aretha rejected—‘I’m Coming Out’ and ‘Upside Down’—were the same songs they gave to Diana Ross. Both were big hits. When that happened, Aretha acted like she didn’t care. She thought the songs didn’t measure up to her standards. She’ll never admit to a mistake, but, boy, passing on the Chic producers was a huge mistake.”
Enter Van McCoy, whose training as a producer began u
nder the tutelage of Leiber and Stoller, one of the greatest writer/producer teams in the history of R&B. Erma had recorded McCoy’s “Abracadabra” and Aretha sang his “Sweet Bitter Love” during her years on Columbia. In 1975, McCoy’s own album—Disco Nights—included “The Hustle,” an international hit and one of the most enduring of all disco anthems. He had also produced a smash on David Ruffin, “Walk Away from Love,” a masterpiece of seventies soul.
“Van was a humble cat,” said Cecil, “and was easy to work with. Maybe too easy. Aretha was still convinced that she had songs of her own—and one written by her son Clarence—that were smashes. She loaded up the record with that stuff. Van was able to get her to do a couple of his tunes, but, far as I’m concerned, it should have been all McCoy songs, since he was on a hot streak. That would have increased our chances. I don’t blame Van for going along with Aretha’s program—you always want to please the Queen—but I think we paid a price.”
“I realized that if this record had no hits,” said Ahmet Ertegun, “it would probably be Aretha’s last on Atlantic. Her contract was coming due and of course I wanted to keep her. I was more than happy to accommodate her ideas for the cover. She felt as though other singers—like Gloria Gaynor and Donna Summer—had become grand divas during this disco period. She wanted to reestablish herself as the grandest of the divas. Thus the title, La Diva, and the cover art in which she was in a Cleopatra recline. I saw some humor and irony in the imaging, though I’m not sure Aretha did. In any event, we gave the record a concerted promotional push. Van McCoy was a bankable producer and I thought a few of his tracks had hit potential. What I thought, though, made no difference. When the record came out in 1979, it made no impact on the marketplace. From then on, I had a hard time getting Aretha on the phone.”
