Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis in 1942, but grew up in Detroit, where her father, C.L. Franklin, was a minister at the New Bethel Baptist Church. As a child she sang Gospel songs in the church and then began travelling to various churches to perform, with her father as manager. She signed to JVB Records and released her first single in 1956, a Gospel song entitled “Never Grow Old”.
When she reached eighteen years of age, she told her father that she wanted to follow the example of Sam Cooke, recording secular music. Her father supported her decision and helped her make a demo disc to take to record companies. Sam Cooke suggested that she join RCA, like him, and Berry Gordy was also interesting in signing Aretha and her sister Erma to Motown, but her father preferred the offer from Columbia Records, who signed Aretha in 1960.
Despite releasing some good singles that charted on the national R&B chart, Aretha’s success at Columbia was limited. The company didn’t really know what style of music would suit her best.
When her contract expired in 1966, Jerry Wexler approached her and convinced her to join Atlantic Records. Wexler recognised that Aretha’s Gospel background needed to be the foundation of her work at Atlantic. And he had seen how Wilson Pickett had responded to working at first at Stax Records in Memphis and then at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals. He was confident that the FAME trick would also work with Aretha, allowing her to show the full expression of her talent.
Aretha Franklin arrived at FAME Studios in January 1967, carrying a Ronnie Shannon song that she wanted to record called “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)”. When Aretha sat at the piano and started to sing, everyone knew they had struck gold. The studio band joined in, and the song was finished that same day. The single was released the following month and reached number one on the Billboard Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles Chart week-ending 25th March 1967 (7 weeks), while also peaking at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart, giving Franklin the first top-ten Pop single of her solo career and first certified gold single.
Aretha Franklin 1967
Photo: Atlantic Records Trade Ad (cropped)
(Wikimedia Commons)
That, unfortunately for Rick Hall, was as good as it got. During the recording of Franklin’s second song, a fight had broken out between Aretha’s husband and manager Ted White and Ken Laxton, a member of the band. Rick Hall’s intervention, trying to calm things down, seemed to make things worse. Wexler aborted the sessions and took Aretha back to New York, where the album was completed, but with an interesting twist, typical of Wexler.
He invited some of the FAME studio band to come to New York to finish the recording. The plan duly worked and the album, which took its name from that first Muscle Shoals song, went gold. It was Aretha’s tenth studio album, but she had finally found her real voice at Muscle Shoals, just as Wexler thought she would. Wexler was very good at his job! In 1967 he was named Record Executive of the Year for turning Aretha Franklin’s career around.
The album contains a number of classic Aretha Franklin tracks, especially the title track and “Respect”. The album was released in March 1967 and went to number two on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart. The single “Respect” was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart for two weeks in June 1967, and number one on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart for eight weeks, from May to July 1967. It became Aretha’s song! As Otis Redding acknowledged: “That little girl done took my song away from me”. The song has also reverberated down the years as a feminist and civil rights anthem. Two more songs from the album’s B side also stand out. “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” was also recorded at FAME, although it was not completed when the altercation stopped the session. It was finished in New York on an eight-track machine and became the B-side of “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)”. It was written by Dan Penn and Chips Moman, and Jerry Wexler was given the production credit.
When Jerry Wexler had arranged the visit to FAME, he had also arranged for Chips Moman and Tommy Cogbill to come from Memphis to join the session band. It was a strong group that came to the studio that day: Moman and Jimmy Johnson on guitars, Cogbill on bass, Roger Hawkins on drums, and Spooner Oldham on Wurlitzer electronic piano and Aretha on piano. The horn section consisted of Ken Laxton on trumpet, King Curtis and Charles Chalmers on tenor sax, and Willie Bridges on baritone sax.
For the sessions in New York, Ken Laxton was replaced by Melvin Lastie, and Gene Chrisman shared drum duties with Roger Hawkins. In addition, Aretha’s sisters Carolyn and Erma along with Cissy Houston provided background vocals. Tom Dowd was responsible for arrangements and, along with Arif Mardin, did an excellent job as sound engineer.
The album was re-issued in 1969 in stereo.
Aretha Franklin went on to greater things, but she probably never forgot that day in January 1967, when she sat at the piano in the FAME Studio and played the first chord of “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)”. The solo album “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” became a certified gold album according to the RIAA on June 13th 1967 and spent a total of 14 weeks at number one on the Billboard Soul and R&B Albums Chart week-ending 29th April 1967. According to Atlantic Records, the combined sales of the album and single was approximately 3.5 million copies that year in the USA. In the same year, the American music industry achieved the billion-dollar mark in gross earnings for the first time.
Franklin’s first Grammy Award also came in 1967, for “Best Rhythm & Blues Recording and Best Rhythm & Blues Solo Vocal Performance, Female” for “Respect”. The Recording Academy (the Grammy Award institution) stated that in the mid-1960s, Aretha Franklin was already a well-respected R&B soul singer. But her 1967 recording of the Otis Redding song “Respect”, from her hit album “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)”, went to number two on the Billboard 200 Album Chart listing, and to number one on the Billboard Soul and R&B Albums Chart, launching her to new heights of mainstream acclaim and popularity.
