Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin

by David Ritz

  “Aretha had these grandiose plans to record with the great artists of our time,” said Ruth Bowen. “She was talking about everyone from Julio Iglesias to Tony Bennett to R. Kelly. I thought it was the right move, and I presume Clive Davis felt the same. But then came Aretha’s demands and her schedule changes and her cancellations and God knows what else. The record didn’t have a chance. It fell apart in the planning stage because Aretha refused to have anyone help her with the planning. Her control thing was getting worse by the day.”

  If she couldn’t control the production and release of her duets album, at least she could control her birthday parties.

  “She loved those parties,” said her brother Vaughn, “and loved to fuss over all the details. They were always in Detroit and she always had her choice of entertainers. She always liked having the local TV stars. That’s because she watched the news every night and got a kick out of seeing the news-anchor personalities at the party. For her fifty-eighth birthday party at the Town Center Atrium Garden in Southfield, Mayor Dennis Archer showed up and so did Lloyd Price. She had Rose Royce playing ‘Car Wash’ and Pete Escovedo playing cool Latin jazz.”

  That summer she was back at the JVC Jazz Festival, where she had her problems. The New York Times headline was “What Aretha Wants and Needs, She Doesn’t Always Get.” Reviewer Ben Ratliff wrote, “By the third request to her band to lower its volume, Aretha Franklin wasn’t kidding around. She fixed her eyes on her bandleader and got an ovation from the crowd when she asked him, specifically, to fix the problem. But the evening had already lost so much momentum that there was virtually no way Saturday night’s concert at Avery Fisher Hall… was going to end up very satisfying.”

  Whether it was the muddled sound mix or a bloated band playing out of tune, all evening long, Aretha struggled to find her form. The tried-and-true medley of her hits—“Respect,” “Think,” “Ain’t No Way”—felt gratuitous and uninspired. She sang “Nessun Dorma,” by now part of her repertoire, with surprising indifference. For me, the only moving moment came when she went to the piano to accompany herself on Leon Russell’s “A Song for You,” sung for Johnnie Taylor, the recently deceased R&B titan whom she had known since the fifties, when they traveled the same gospel circuit.

  While she generously paid tribute to the fallen colleagues from her early years, it would take little to rekindle her spirit of rivalry. That November, for example, she became enraged when Natalie Cole’s recently released autobiography, Angel on My Shoulder, described how Aretha had snubbed Cole: “She would get upset if I was on the same TV show with her, and she would walk out of the room if I walked in. That really hurt.” When Aretha read those words, she called me to say that she was furious. She claimed that no such thing had ever happened and wanted to write a rebuttal. I pointed out that Natalie’s next lines read “Thankfully, that’s changed. Aretha and I are now friends.” Ultimately Aretha dropped the idea of defending herself.

  Some months later, when she sang on a live recording with James Carter at a famed Detroit jazz club, Natalie was in the audience cheering her on. However, Aretha’s performances were excluded from the album, Live at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge. When I asked Ahmet Ertegun, Aretha’s great friend and executive producer of Carter’s Atlantic album, why, he said, “I was able to use my influence to get Aretha to come to the club and sing. As usual, she sang magnificently. But when it came to the business negotiations, things got complicated and I had to bow out.”

  During the winter of 2000, the business of booking Aretha faced serious challenges. According to Dick Alen, her agent at William Morris, this was a period when the demand for Aretha had slowed down considerably. “It had been three or four years since her last studio album,” said Alen. “She had no new product out there and the offers weren’t what they used to be. Fortunately, VH One came up with an idea to honor her on a Divas Live program. That saved the day. It kept Aretha in the spotlight during a period that otherwise was pretty dark.”

  Billed as a tribute to Aretha, the show from New York’s Radio City Music Hall was broadcast in April 2001. A benefit for VH1’s Save the Music Foundation, the program featured everyone from jazz trumpeter Clark Terry to Mary J. Blige to Kid Rock to Bishop Paul Morton of the Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church Ministries. Aretha was in high spirits, especially doing her witty musical dialogue with Stevie Wonder.

  “Aretha loved the Divas Live shows and they did her a world of good,” Erma told me. “We were getting along well when I came over to her house to congratulate her on her TV performance. The reviews were all great. I was used to seeing Aretha’s house in disorder. That was just her way. But when I got there, it was far worse than I had ever seen. It was chaos. She still hadn’t unpacked from her last trip two weeks before. Opened suitcases with clothes falling out were everywhere. Plastic bags from the dry cleaners were piled up on the floor. Dishes were piled in the sink. Aretha said she had to fire her housekeeper. I didn’t ask why. Aretha has always had problems trusting housekeepers. I wasn’t going to say a word until I looked under the coffee table in the living room and, stuck between old copies of Vogue magazine, spotted a royalty check for twenty thousand dollars. ‘Aretha,’ I said. ‘You need to get better organized. You’re about to lose a big check.’ ‘What check?’ she asked. When I pointed it out, she bent down, picked it up, stuffed it in her purse, and asked me who I was to criticize her. ‘I’ll have you know that I’m extremely well organized,’ she said. After that she wouldn’t talk to me for weeks.”

  In August 2001, Erma was diagnosed with cancer. It was her daughter, Sabrina, and cousin Brenda who told Aretha.

  “Aretha became furious,” Sabrina told me. “She flew off the handle and said that my mother’s doctors were incompetent and didn’t know what they were talking about. She kept saying, ‘Don’t call me with bad news like this. I just don’t want to hear it. I don’t believe it, not for a minute.’ I knew that, when it came to her own life, Aretha lived in great denial. But this was different. This was a matter of applying her denial to the physical condition of someone else. It was almost as if her rejection would make the cancer diagnosis go away. Aretha had suffered the loss of her dad, her sister Carolyn, and her brother Cecil. She simply didn’t want to deal with the prospect of losing her sister Erma.

  “When Aretha could no longer deny the accuracy of the prognosis, she called my mother often but was reluctant to visit. After a few months, though, she did stop by with tons of groceries. She’d stay and cook lavish dinners. By then Mom didn’t have much appetite but she appreciated Aretha’s effort. Their rift was finally healed and their disagreements and misunderstandings all behind them. They talked warmly and laughed freely. Those visits did my mother a world of good. As Mom grew sicker, Aretha showed up more frequently. She also paid Eva Greene, my mother’s neighbor and closest friend, to move in and care for Mom. Aretha would send my mother beautiful fresh flowers—Gerbera daisies—to brighten her room, along with fresh fruit baskets, CDs, magazines, and all sorts of goodies she thought would help her sister’s spirit. My view of the Erma-Aretha relationship was this: It was highly complicated. Their history had definitely been marked by intense sibling rivalry. But in the end, they loved and understood each other on the deepest level. Everyone knew not to get in the middle of their disagreements because the sisters would eventually work things out. When my mother passed on September seventh, 2002, some fourteen months after the diagnosis, she and Aretha were certainly at peace with one another, and that was beautiful.”

  Aretha’s grief intensified with the death of her brother Vaughn nine weeks later. His passing was another crushing blow.

  “The more people Aretha lost,” said her sister-in-law Earline, “the less people she trusted. That’s when she became more controlling. That’s also when her weight got out of control. Fear had her wanting to control everyone and everything, but the one thing she couldn’t control was her appetite. And the more anxious she became, the more she ate.”
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br />   Her mood wasn’t helped when, in November of 2001, the Detroit Free Press reported that Aretha had sued the tabloid the Star “for a story last year describing her as an out-of-control drunk.” The report was indeed false. Aretha had not had a drink since the early seventies. According to Aretha, the tabloid settled with her out of court and issued an apology.

  “That vicious and untrue article put Aretha in an understandably terrible mood,” said Ruth Bowen. “You combine that with Erma getting so sick and passing away so quickly, you can imagine how down she was. Then in November one of her big houses in the Detroit burbs burned to the ground. She hadn’t lived in that one for years, but she kept all sorts of clothes and records stored there. Everything went up in flames.”

  In January 2003, the Detroit Free Press reported that Franklin wouldn’t cooperate with investigators looking into the fire but that she relented after being subpoenaed.

  “Aretha hates any publicity that’s not completely positive, and this fire story darkened her mood,” said Ruth Bowen. “No one ever discovered the cause of the blaze, but the papers made it sound like there was funny business when there wasn’t. I told Ree to forget the whole thing and just concentrate on recording a new record. It had been six years since A Rose Is Still a Rose. By then L. A. Reid had taken over Arista and was hungry for some Aretha product. Given how she was struggling, though, I couldn’t imagine what kind of record she wanted to make. But count on Aretha to act like nothing was wrong. In the midst of her misery, she called her new album So Damn Happy.”

  37. OLDIES BUT GOODIES

  One of the most attractive aspects of Aretha’s public persona was her unabashed nostalgia. She had passionate fondness for the music of her youth and deep regard for her contemporaries who performed that music with such singular style.

  In 2003, Aretha agreed to cohost an installment of American Soundtrack, a PBS series of concert shows produced by WGED in Pittsburgh. It was basically an oldies show geared to the aging-baby-boomer market. Her cohost would be Lou Rawls and the other entertainers included her former boyfriend Dennis Edwards as well as Gloria Gaynor and Mary Wilson.

  “Ree loves old school,” said Ruth Bowen. “She has great appreciation of her contemporaries and is rightfully proud of the rich lineage of rhythm and blues that she’s so much a part of. But she’s also said that she never wants to go out on the oldies circuit. She agreed to do it because the money was right and also because she wanted to sing with Lou.”

  The Aretha/Lou Rawls duet, “At Last,” is a rereading of the classic long associated with Etta James. Excited by Lou’s ultra-relaxed presence and nuanced gospel shadings, Aretha tells the audience, “Sounds like the Pilgrim Travelers to me.” The reference is to the fifties gospel group with whom Rawls originally sang. Aretha is in fine form, turning in one of her great performances of the 2000s.

  “The show made her happy,” said Ruth. “It did her good to reconnect to so many of the soul stars she came up with. But the next day she was on the phone telling me that she had no intention of being typecast as an aging diva. In fact, she was going to do a hip-hop record. ‘Oh no, you’re not,’ I said. ‘Just watch me’ was her reply.”

  That record—So Damn Happy—would more accurately be called hip-hop-influenced. Troy Taylor cowrote and produced three of the tracks, including the first single, “The Only Thing Missin’.”

  “I had been writing songs with Mary J. Blige,” said Taylor, “originally designed for her reunion album with Puffy Combs. At the last minute, Mary thought Puffy was being too controlling, so she withdrew from the project. Around the same time L. A. Reid, looking for a cutting-edge R-and-B album for Aretha, called to see if I was willing. Was I! Mary was thrilled to have Aretha do the songs. In fact, Mary sings background on one of them—‘Holdin’ On.’ We recorded in Aretha’s living room, where she had set up a studio. I’ve produced a lot of legends, including Patti LaBelle and Ron Isley, and I like to think I come prepared and confident. But my preparation was nothing compared to Aretha’s. When I looked at the lyric sheet on the piano I saw that she had made all sorts of notations, where she would twist the melody this way or that. She had a complete vision of how to sing the song. So when it came time to lay down the vocals, she pulled it off in one or two takes. When I suggested that she scat, she jumped right into it. I’ve always considered Aretha one of the dopest scatters, and she proved me right. Later I learned that she had recently lost some dear family members, but you’d never know it by her demeanor at those sessions. She was the complete professional. And as far as critics claiming that her voice was off, I strongly disagree. She could—and did—reach any note she wanted to reach.”

  Gordon Chambers, who cowrote “The Only Thing Missin’ ” and cowrote and produced “Ain’t No Way,” had much the same reaction.

  “When I arrived at her home studio in Detroit,” said Chambers, “she was at the piano practicing. I discovered that she not only learns the song by listening to the tapes, but she actually works out the song on piano. That’s how she’s able to Aretha-ize it. In her golden era, she may have sung more full-out from her chest and was now singing more from her head, but she knew how to make that adjustment flawlessly. I was a little reluctant to make any suggestions whatsoever, but at one point I gathered my courage and said, ‘That last verse was great but I’d love to hear you sing it again.’ She looked me up and down in a school principal–diva way and said, ‘I don’t know what you think is wrong with that verse but I’ll do it again.’ The second time she sang it with more fire. ‘It was good before,’ she said, ‘but now it’s better.’ That was her way of saying I had good ears.

  “She was also extremely gracious. I heard stories about eating collard greens with Aunt Ree Ree in the kitchen. But this was strictly gourmet. She had a beautiful spread of all sorts of exotic foods, including Middle Eastern fare. She made us all feel welcome. After the album came out, I went to see her at Radio City. My mother was with me that night, and when Aretha asked me to stand and introduced me to the audience, that meant the world to me. No other artist had treated me with such respect.”

  Burt Bacharach also produced one of the album cuts—“Falling Out of Love,” a song he wrote with Jed and Jerry Leiber.

  “I actually wrote three or four songs that she recorded in that period,” Bacharach told me. “My idea was to write the arrangement in LA and cut the track before going to Detroit to produce the vocal. On ‘Falling Out of Love,’ the only song that made it on that record, I played the arrangement for her over the phone. I wrote it in G. ‘It’s too low, Burt,’ she said. ‘I think it’s right in your ballpark, Aretha.’ ‘Well, please try it a minor third higher.’ ‘I’m afraid that’ll be too high,’ I gently pushed back. With that, she took the phone over to the piano and started playing it a minor third higher. She was absolutely right. It sounded better. When I arrived in Detroit, she invited me to her home studio and said, ‘The background singers are all set.’ ‘The arrangement doesn’t call for background singers,’ I said. ‘Oh, you’ll love the background parts.’ And I did. Aretha wrote extremely tasteful and beautifully harmonious backgrounds.

  “The only minor disagreement we had involved interpretation. Because these were all new songs, I encouraged her to sing the melodies as written, at least in the opening verses and chorus. After that she could introduce whatever variations she liked. For the most part she was accommodating. But because Aretha is both a flawless singer and a brilliant interpretative artist, it’s difficult for her not to put on her own spin. In the end, her spins usually improved the original material.”

  The first single, “The Only Thing Missin’,” released in the summer of 2003, was well received. “Aretha Franklin sounds more natural than she has in years,” Jon Pareles said in the New York Times.

  In Billboard, Fred Bronson wrote, “The four-year, nine-month gap between Aretha Franklin’s most recent hit (‘Here We Go Again’ in 1998) and… ‘The Only Thing Missin’ ’ is by far the longest break in he
r extensive r&b singles chart history.”

  “I was still amazed that after Erma and Vaughn’s deaths,” said Ruth Bowen, “Aretha could call her record So Damn Happy. But that’s her way of coping—pretending that sadness and suffering don’t really exist. It works for her most of the time, but then, before the release of the record, when Luther Vandross fell so sick, she couldn’t keep up the façade. She couldn’t go around saying that she was still ‘so damn happy.’ Luther’s tragedy hit her really hard. For all their dueling-diva dramas, she was crazy about him.”

  On April 16, 2003, Luther suffered a near-fatal stroke in his apartment in midtown Manhattan. A month later, Aretha held a candlelight vigil and prayer service at the Little Rock Baptist Church in Detroit, recruiting the Four Tops and the Ebenezer Mass Choir. On several occasions, she held private prayer vigils in her home in Bloomfield Hills.

  “Her intentions were all good,” said Ruth Bowen. “It was as though by praying long and hard, she could get God Himself to save Luther’s life. She figured that if God was gonna listen to anyone, He’d listen to Aretha. But unfortunately, Luther got worse. And despite all this ‘so damn happy’ business, no one was sadder than Aretha.”

  Sadness briefly turned to delight in July when, during a concert in Atlanta, she was joined onstage by ex-boyfriend Dennis Edwards, who transposed the Temptations’ “My Girl” into “My Queen.”

  On one of her favorite stages—New York City’s Radio City Music Hall—she gave an especially lackluster performance. It felt like the same-old-same-old to me. Only a medley of some of her earliest material on Columbia, including a stirring “Skylark” and “Try a Little Tenderness,” seemed to challenge her enormous interpretative gifts. She spent a great deal of time complaining about the sound system. After the concert she told me that she had regrets about missing that afternoon’s rehearsal. “My agents and publicists are pushing me in too many directions at once,” she said.