by David Ritz
“She signed up for a program [for people who are afraid of flying] that one of the airlines offers,” said her cousin Brenda Corbett. “We all supported her in that effort. You’d go out to the airport, sit in the plane, and they took you through the sounds of a flight. They did it step by step, carefully explaining just what was happening, so you got used to the experience. After doing this a few times, they’d pick a clear day and take you on a short flight. So far, so good. Aretha went through the program, but on the day of the short flight, she said, ‘Oh, no. This is not happening. I am not ready.’ And she was out of there.”
In July, Billboard reported that Aretha had “canceled a series of concerts at New York’s Radio City Music Hall with no explanation… The Queen of Soul has limited all concert dates to shows within driving distance.”
“She didn’t consider the six hundred and twenty miles from Detroit to New York a driving distance,” said Cecil. “For Aretha, a driving distance meant getting to the gig in less than a day. She didn’t like the limo or bus driver to go faster than fifty, and she liked to take a break every few hours. That meant a drive to Manhattan was a matter of two days, something she considered too taxing. Rather than go to the fans, we found a way for the fans to come to us. We taped an hour-long Showtime special in Detroit and arranged for West One to broadcast a stereo simulcast.”
“It was another summer from hell,” said Ruth Bowen. “I can’t remember the number of dates we booked and then canceled.”
“I didn’t keep count of cancellations,” said Dick Alen of William Morris. “My attitude was to accommodate Aretha as best I could. Going in, I realized that she was someone likely to change her mind at the last minute. I couldn’t change her and didn’t try. I accepted that an essential part of my job was to clean up after her. I didn’t try to understand her moods. I wasn’t her psychologist; I was just the guy who negotiated her fees.”
“Part of the reason she was in a bad mood that summer had to do with Anita Baker,” said Ruth. “Like Aretha, Anita is a Detroit girl. And also like Aretha, Anita is an artist who applies a highly sophisticated jazz sensibility to rhythm and blues. Remember that Rapture, Anita’s second album, came out in 1986 and was an international sensation. It far outperformed Aretha and wound up selling something like eight million copies. Then to add insult to injury, Anita beat out Aretha, who was nominated for ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash,’ for best R-and-B female vocal performance. Before Anita, Aretha had Detroit locked up. She was without a doubt the biggest star in the city. Now here comes Anita, produced by Michael Powell, another budding local Detroit talent. None of this made Miss Thing happy. She used to say, ‘If I toured as much as Anita, I’d be selling in the millions myself.’ ‘Well, why don’t you?’ I asked. ‘I will—just you watch.’ But she didn’t. She couldn’t sustain a multicity, much less a multicountry, tour that involved a dozen or two dozen dates. Aretha went out and worked only when she had to—that is to say, when she was broke. Which was often.”
In January 1987, the second annual induction ceremony of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame took place in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. Along with nonperformers Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler and artists B.B. King, Jackie Wilson, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson, Aretha was an inductee, the first woman to be selected.
“She saw it as a huge honor,” said Cecil. “She thought that they would have chosen Ruth Brown or Etta James, women that came before her. Maybe it was because they were seen as rhythm and blues and not rock and roll. We’d always seen rock and roll as the white version of R-and-B—Georgia Gibbs singing LaVern Baker or Pat Boone singing Fats Domino. But an honor is an honor, and since Ree had been recently breaking into rock, this honor was right on time. We were also happy to hear that Keith Richards, who’d been working with us on ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash,’ was personally giving her the award. We were all set to go, but then the weather got bad and Aretha got nervous about the drive. She sent me instead. I had a ball hanging out with my main man Smokey. When he got up to get his prize, the whole audience started singing his ‘Ooo Baby Baby.’ It was beautiful.”
“Not showing up to be inducted as the first-ever female in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame could not be seen as a good public relations move,” said Ruth Bowen. “As a friend who continued to care about her, I mentioned this to Aretha. I also said that, because Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun were being inducted that same night, it would be beautiful to see her standing on the podium with two men so instrumental in her career. ‘Ruth,’ she said, ‘that part of my career is in the distant past. I’ve moved on.’ ”
30. IN THE STORM TOO LONG
Aretha dedicated the first half of 1987 to a project for which she had great passion—a follow-up to Amazing Grace, the bestselling gospel album of all time and the record that many of her most ardent fans, myself included, consider her best.
“She wanted to honor her gospel heritage, of course,” said Cecil, “but mainly she wanted to honor our father. That’s why she made sure that the live concerts were religious services, just like Amazing Grace. Where Amazing Grace was based in Los Angeles because of James Cleveland, she wanted the follow-up to be done in Detroit, at New Bethel. And where Jerry Wexler was the organizing force and chief supervisor of Amazing Grace, Aretha wanted to run this operation entirely on her own. Clive had let her produce several cuts of her own, but never an entire album. ‘It’s time,’ she told me. ‘No co-supervisors, no co-producers, just me.’ ”
The Arista label head agreed. In Aretha’s liner notes to the album that she titled One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, she wrote, “With much appreciation to Clive Davis for giving me the opportunity and entrusting such a mammoth project to my sole creative judgment.”
“The beautiful thing about the album,” said cousin Brenda, who was Aretha’s assistant production coordinator, “was that Aretha, her two sisters, and her brother Cecil were all together in their daddy’s church. That would be the last time. Thank God it was all caught on record.”
“Given the talent she assembled,” said James Cleveland, a prime contributor to Amazing Grace, “it should have been a much better record. But I could tell from the outset that it was going to be rough riding. Aretha took it all on herself—every little detail. I tried to tell her that she needed a producer and nominated myself for the job. I tried to tell her that it was enough that she simply be the main vocalist. She didn’t need to be an organizer. Organization is her greatest weakness. She took offense. In fact, she never called me back, and my invitation to come to Detroit was put on permanent hold. I never knew why.”
The album was composed of three separate concert/services at New Bethel in the summer of 1987—July 27, 28, and 30. Aretha committed to a double LP, mirroring the format of Amazing Grace.
“Aretha was able to delegate a lot of the work to me,” said Brenda, “and I loved doing it. As the production coordinator, I oversaw all the rehearsals. I managed the choir and made sure it all ran smoothly.”
“Ree simply took on more than she could manage,” said Cecil. “She was picking the talent, picking the musicians, picking the hymns, and picking the various ministers. Up until the last minute it wasn’t clear who was going to sing what and when.”
“Because of Aretha’s position,” said Erma, “she could command the presence of whomever she liked—and she did. She invited the crème de la crème of the gospel world—Mavis Staples, Thomas Whitfield, Joe Ligon of the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and Reverends Jesse Jackson, Donald Parsons, and Jaspar Williams. I was thrilled and grateful to participate.”
From the start, the project was ambitious. In addition to producing a gospel record of lasting value, Aretha wanted to outperform and outsell Amazing Grace. If Amazing Grace lives as a luminous moment in the history of gospel, that is partially due to the extraordinary supporting cast surrounding its recording. Wexler was a strong and single-minded producer. He got the super-funky secular rhythm section he wanted. He made sure that, in choosing Ja
mes Cleveland, Aretha got a choir director who could direct her when needed. In addition, the Aretha of 1972 was a far cry from the Aretha of 1987.
Twenty-nine years old at the time of Amazing Grace, Aretha conveyed both a genuine humility and a longing to thrill the two gospel greats seated in the first pew, whom she admired above all others—her father and her father’s lover Clara Ward. Fifteen years later, that humility was lost. She was determined to prove to the world that she no longer needed a Hammond, a Wexler, a Clive Davis, a Luther Vandross, or a Narada Michael Walden. When it came to gospel, she felt that her taste was unerring. After all, she was a child of the gospel world. Gospel was her first passion. Gospel was her teacher. It was gospel that turned her into a child star.
“The album contains some moving moments, I’ll grant you that,” said Reverend Cleveland. “I found myself tearing up when Aretha sang those two Clara Ward songs with her sisters and cousin Brenda—‘Jesus Hears Every Prayer’ and ‘Surely God Is Able.’ That goes to the deepest part of their childhood. It was also stirring to hear Aretha sing ‘I’ve Been in the Storm Too Long’ with Joe Ligon. But overall, I have to say that it sounds scattered—a little bit of preaching, a little bit of singing, but nothing unified. Amazing Grace was a whole story with beginning, middle, and end. This time around, Aretha lost sight of the story.”
“Aretha was very generous in allowing everyone to have his or her say,” said Cecil. “She invited me up to do a little preaching, just as she invited Jesse Jackson to say whatever he liked. But it all went on for too long and needed to be cut when it came time to put the record together. There were also problems with the mix.”
“After Aretha, the biggest star was Mavis Staples,” said Erma. “The Stapleses and the Franklins have known each other since the very beginning, and it was appropriate that Aretha invited Mavis to do two duets with her. Ree even spoke of how, as children, traveling with our folks on the gospel circuit, we all met on a muddy Mississippi road. It was a beautiful memory. But when the record was mixed and Aretha listened to those duets, she was convinced that Mavis’s voice overwhelmed hers. Singing with the one other gospel singer who could rightfully be called her equal, Aretha felt threatened. I told her she had nothing to worry about, that the two of them sounded great together. Their voices were completely complementary. But Aretha didn’t hear it that way. She put Mavis’s voice so low in the mix that you could barely hear it. It became an ordeal and caused a serious falling-out.”
In the New York Times, John Rockwell called the record “one of the most eagerly awaited albums of the year. Which makes its failure all the more disappointing… One suspects that Miss Franklin, eager to appease all the various dignitaries who had assembled for the occasion, and perhaps constrained by the grandeur of the event, lost sight of the unbridled enthusiasm that has defined her own best gospel work.” Rockwell went on to complain about what he termed the record’s “speechifying.” There was too much talking between songs, the songs themselves were too often truncated, and the production was disjointed.
In the liner notes, Aretha included her own review, writing, “It’s truly a pièce de résistance of Gospel.”
The public didn’t see it that way. The record languished on the charts and, in comparison with Amazing Grace, a perpetual seller, made little impact on the marketplace.
“Amazing Grace is Aretha’s gospel landmark,” said Reverend Cleveland. “As a young lady she had recorded gospel before that and, with this Arista release, she recorded gospel after that. But in my opinion and the opinion of most gospel lovers, none of it comes close to those miraculous performances that happened back in 1972. For another great Aretha gospel production to succeed, she’d need the help of a producer to harmonize the elements. But Aretha remained blind to the fact that she’s never her best producer.”
A sad undercurrent of One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism was the declining health of Aretha’s sister Carolyn and her brother Cecil.
“Carolyn had been diagnosed with breast cancer,” said Erma. “Initially there was reason for optimism, but a second opinion indicated that the cancer was extremely virulent. She was advised to undergo radiation. Carolyn had spent a great deal of time in various colleges without having earned a degree and, at the time of this medical crisis, was enrolled at Marygrove College. She was close to fulfilling all her requirements, and, cancer or no cancer, she wasn’t about to give up. She was gonna get that degree.
“We all interrupted our lives in order to help our sister, but Aretha above all. She was wonderful. She moved Carolyn into her home and hired a full-time nurse to care for her. There was a moment when it seemed as though the treatments were working and the cancer had moved into remission, but those hopes were quickly dashed. At the start of 1988, Carolyn was suffering mightily. And yet she somehow continued to do her course work, write her papers, and pass her exams.
“Infections set in and there were any number of hospital stays. The prognoses became more and more dire. A new surge of hope came over all of us when we learned that Carolyn would be given her degree. Aretha gave her a graduation party, a big, happy catered affair. At that point Carolyn could no longer walk, but that didn’t stop her from wearing her cap and gown in bed, where she was handed her diploma. We were cheering and crying.”
When Carolyn Ann Franklin died, on April 25, 1988, she was two weeks short of her forty-fourth birthday and had been a college graduate for only a few weeks. Services were held at her father’s church.
“I consider her a great woman,” said Erma, “a powerful artist with a tremendous writing and singing talent. She went her own way, lived her own life, and found freedom in her individuality. Like me, she experienced great frustration in her career. We were both challenged by the success of our extraordinary sister. In the end, though, Carolyn more than proved her own worth. She left behind a legacy of enduring music.”
“When you think of how Carolyn and Aretha fought their entire lives—I mean, they were literally at each other’s throat—it was amazing to see how Aretha rallied to Carolyn’s side at the end,” said sister-in-law Earline. “The Franklin sisterhood is something to behold. No sisters are more competitive. Every two weeks Aretha would have a nasty falling-out with either Carolyn or Erma. Yet when push came to shove, Aretha was their biggest protector.
“When it came to my husband, though, it was a different story. Cecil was Aretha’s protector. And Aretha could never—and still can’t—admit that Cecil fell into heavy drug addiction. In the eighties, when freebase cocaine swept through the neighborhood, my husband got hooked. He stayed hooked. Somehow he still managed to do his work with Aretha, but just barely. She wouldn’t recognize this. She viewed Cecil the same way she viewed her father—a perfect man with no faults. But like his father, Cecil, despite his brilliant mind, was vulnerable to the world and all its temptations. Finally, I had enough. I told him that if he didn’t go to rehab, I was gone.”
I visited Cecil in Detroit just before his rehab. He spoke a great deal about his friends who had been crushed by crack. “I knew Marvin Gaye was on the pipe,” he said, “because he told me to stay away from it. Marvin’s whole history with drugs was a cautionary tale.” He also mentioned David Ruffin, who was struggling with a crack cocaine addiction that, in a few years, would take his life. Cecil discussed how he, his father, and his siblings had all operated in a world of stimulants. “Whether it’s wine, whiskey, or weed,” said Cecil then, “the stuff has always been around us—and all of us have had to deal with this stuff in one way or another. Now it’s time for me to finally come to terms with my addiction and win this long battle.”
When I saw Cecil after his stay in rehab, he described himself as clearheaded for the first time in decades. He said he was facing the future with new determination and fresh energy.
“I was so proud of him,” said Ruth Bowen. “Cecil was my protégé, one of the smartest people I’d ever known. So you can imagine how much I hated seeing him get lost in all those drugs. When
he got clean, I rejoiced. But then, when Earline called to say that they’d found a spot on his lungs, I fell apart. I was just devastated, and I could only imagine what this would do to Aretha. But Aretha did not fall apart. She rarely does. Her way of coping with adversity is to stay in the social swim. That helps her keep her head above water.”
Bowen’s point was made by a photo in Jet of Aretha at her “annual masquerade ball” in which she was dressed as an Egyptian queen, and her date, Willie Wilkerson, as an old-time convict.
In this same summer of 1988, her Chicago nightclub show was filmed for PBS’s Soundstage and later released as Live at Park West, first in videocassette and then on DVD. At forty-six, she appears to be in good shape. She wears a twenties-style sleeveless flapper dress, cut low in the front. Her enormous cleavage is on full display. Her mood is carefree. She’s feeling frisky and sexy and even jokes about doing a striptease. After an unsteady opening—her cover of Frankie Beverly’s “Love Is the Key”—she renders a fabulous “Love All the Hurt Away,” her hit duet with George Benson. She sings both her part and his, and her Benson imitation is a comic/musical masterpiece; she opens up the song, a lovely ballad, and gives it wings. Her scat singing, a slick soul variation of the Ella Fitzgerald/Sarah Vaughan variety, is superb and wholly original. Her spoken vamp at the end, shadowed by the great guitarist David T. Walker, becomes a sermon on sexual anticipation. (“I’ll meet you at the front door with one of those sweet kisses,” she says-sings. “I’ll put a big pot of greens and hot-water cornbread on for you, baby… and we’ll slide under those silk sheets.”) The medley of her Atlantic hits is less convincing, but both her reading of sister Carolyn’s “Ain’t No Way” and her return to the Columbia-era gem “Sweet Bitter Love” are startling, reminding us that, on any given night, she has the God-given ability to turn the secular sacred and, in the case of her interpretation of Mahalia Jackson’s “Didn’t It Rain,” the sacred secular.
