Respect.
R.I.P. Aretha Franklin
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- sportdan30
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Re: R.I.P. Aretha Franklin
What a voice... she left humanity a treat that will live on forever!
Re: R.I.P. Aretha Franklin
First Lady into the rock and roll HoF. The Queen of soul, incredible pipes even in her later years, a great influence to many of the stars today and yesteryear...
- pk500
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Re: R.I.P. Aretha Franklin
My fondest memory of Aretha was when she blew the modern divas off the stage in the VH1 "Divas" concert. Those warblers thought they were great, and then Aretha began to sing ...
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Re: R.I.P. Aretha Franklin
My fondest memory of AF was in the Blues Brothers movie. As far as singers go she had the pipes and the closest singer to AF in my book is the Queen of Funk, Chaka Chanpk500 wrote:My fondest memory of Aretha was when she blew the modern divas off the stage in the VH1 "Divas" concert. Those warblers thought they were great, and then Aretha began to sing ...
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Re: R.I.P. Aretha Franklin
She's is in the uppermost of the uppermost of American musicians. The elite's elite. Louis, Duke, Hank, Ray, Bird, Miles. Rare air.
I can't recommend David Ritz's biography ("Respect") strongly enough. She had a crazy, complicated and fascinating life. Ritz co-wrote her autobiography as well, but she insisted on a significant number of less-than-factual alterations. Years later, Ritz wrote his unauthorized but completely brilliant bio as a mea culpa for the first book.
Aretha was a monstrously underrated pianist and producer. She drove all of her sessions, even at Atlantic where Jerry Wexler gets most of the credit. Wexler did have the clarity of mind to realize what Columbia was doing wrong with Aretha, but he also had the good sense to let her drive the train in the studio. It's a trope that Columbia "wasted" Aretha, but both her early work and much of her widely-derided 70's albums contain more that a reasonable percentage of transcendent moments. Enough to make the career of a lesser artist.
Give those early and late records a chance and you'll see what she could do outside her usual comfort zone.
I can't recommend David Ritz's biography ("Respect") strongly enough. She had a crazy, complicated and fascinating life. Ritz co-wrote her autobiography as well, but she insisted on a significant number of less-than-factual alterations. Years later, Ritz wrote his unauthorized but completely brilliant bio as a mea culpa for the first book.
Aretha was a monstrously underrated pianist and producer. She drove all of her sessions, even at Atlantic where Jerry Wexler gets most of the credit. Wexler did have the clarity of mind to realize what Columbia was doing wrong with Aretha, but he also had the good sense to let her drive the train in the studio. It's a trope that Columbia "wasted" Aretha, but both her early work and much of her widely-derided 70's albums contain more that a reasonable percentage of transcendent moments. Enough to make the career of a lesser artist.
Give those early and late records a chance and you'll see what she could do outside her usual comfort zone.
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