R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Aretha Franklin's homegoing was a complete circus of odd to me.

Eight long hours where a bevy of questionable men made it a mission at the pulpits to scream about Idiot Orange In Chief and other random non-Aretha related topics. Eight long hours that occupied a mixed bag of performances that (to me) failed to stir the soul, where the corpse changed costumes four times, a minister groped a pop star, who wore club gear to a funeral, that led to a former president to ogle at her...*exasperated long sigh* Eight long hours that seemed removed from its honoree, and a complete affront to a woman who was a musical legend, a deity diva whose soundtrack called and responded to a generation. From the onset, the whole affair almost seemed designed as if nobody knew who Aretha Franklin truly was.

Then again, Aretha seemed to want it that way.

This is something author David Ritz points out in the introduction for Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin, the struggle he had at getting Aretha to tell her side of the story when he wrote an early biography of hers. She was not interested, that is, unless it was on her terms. Fine. Yet, the woman loved to fabricate, spin her own fairy tales, convince herself of the what-could-be, so anything coming out of her mouth outside of singing came to be taken with showers of salt. Her protection of herself in controlling her own narrative may seem laudable. As a woman of color, not too often we're given carte blanche to our own narrative, but it does do a disservice because we never do know who the real Aretha is. This book doesn't exactly skirt from that either.

I think I went into Respect with a vastly different impression of Aretha Franklin.

Of course, I knew Aretha through song, she allowed us that. Over the years I've combed through the bulk of Aretha's catalog and have choice favorites (1971's Young Gifted and Black and 1970's Spirit In The Dark are where my heart lies, and I admit to having a soft spot for 1985's glossy Who's Zoomin' Who) and marvel at her seamless ability to jump from jazz to electro-pop, to opera, to rock  --- though she preferred to have it all under the umbrella that is S-O-U-L. Her music and the interpretations of others spoke to a generation young and old, black and white, male and female. Even if you weren't in love, listen to Aretha and she'll clue you in on those birds and bees, and leave you yearning to feel like a natural woman too. Not religious? Listen to Amazing Grace from start to finish, and Aretha would have you contemplating a new kind of personal Jesus. Universal feeling is what Aretha captured in her oeuvre, and though we fall into a bad habit of only applying the label of "genius" to men, Aretha fits right into such a sentiment by the music and technique she gifted us.

I also knew she was a grand diva, one who shaded better than an oak tree ("nice gowns, beautiful gowns" was one of her finest shade throws), and is the blueprint to what is considered modern American music. Mariah Carey (another diva of choice) said it best once: if you are a singer out today, you're lying if you haven't been influenced by Aretha Franklin. She is the blueprint. She is the grand dame of every note on the damn scale. She's not named The Queen of Soul for kicks.

Delving underneath the crown, Respect operates as a different type of biography in that it's rather an oral history of Aretha's life, as told by the people closest to her. It's prose is not particularly stimulating in language as it's geared to be more conversational, and the book runs linear in time, never pausing to admire the scenery. It does overstay its welcome once we hit the 1990s and Aretha's output wanes, and yet the book doesn't end, and facts are rattled off like a Wikipedia entry. It's much tighter in the beginning when covering Aretha emerging from her father's church into a singing superstar. Saving it from a drudge of factoids, there is a lot, and I do mean A LOT of genuine insight from those who were around Aretha such as producers, fellow musicians, writers, managers, family, friends --- you name it --- Ritz found all the right people who orbited in or around Aretha to give definition to a woman who remained elusive to the hilt.

I'mma be blunt: Aretha is kind of a hot mess. She was stubborn to a horrible degree about her musical choices. She'd flex egotism when she utilized Jet Magazine as her publicist to paint her in better lights. She kept Lawrys seasoning in her bag to sprinkle on fancy French meals. She too often played the futile task of "Build A Man" when it came to choosing a husband. She had feuds with just about every female singer, but had particular bane for Natalie Cole and Roberta Flack. She stole her sister's opportunity to work with Curtis Mayfield that led to what would become the 1976 Sparkle album. She had threw odd parties where she'd lie about the guest list, and had a weird one-sided affair with Tavis Smiley ---- it's a persona fit for a grand dame diva, but a persona that also conflicts with the tender and confident anthems she sung.

Though Ritz highlights most of Aretha's catalog, he doesn't waste time giving extensive critique to each and every release, but he does expose a pattern of her releases that was quite intriguing for a music junkie like me. For how much Aretha shifted the music paradigm beginning in the 1960s and under the tutelage of Jerry Wexler, it fascinated me how when the 1970s shifted sonic gears midway in, turning to flurried funk and the kinetic pulse of disco, Aretha refused to adjust or experiment like her peers, and the stall of her sales and hits proved to have been a mistake. She of course relented by decade's end, but she put out one of the most lackluster disco records ever made. For this faux pas, she repented in the 1980s and 1990s, chasing hot producers and hits throughout her tenure on Arista. Sometimes she scored ("Freeway of Love" and her George Michael duet "I Knew You Were Waiting For Me"), and other times she failed to latch onto a groove.

"Like so many artists with such huge talent, there's often a disconnect inside. Perhaps it's necessary. Something within must remain childlike and wide-eyed in order for the art to be pure and adventurous. Who knows? But in Aretha's case, especially in the last 20 years or so-maybe longer-there hasn't been much adventure musically. She seems to be shoehorning her enormous gift into trite productions and trends. In concerts these days, she often coasts. [But] It's unreasonable to expect her to sound the way she did in 1967, or perform with the same vitality." 

Pushing aside the somewhat cartoonish diva Ritz at times outlines here, glinting through is another side of Aretha, where she has moments of care, charm, and vulnerability, that put a little sweet into the salt pot. You feel for her clamoring for a stable mother figure, and for navigating a segregated and sexist music industry during the turbulent 1960s. You also cheer her on when she champions civil rights without fearing repercussion (her offering to post bail for civil rights activist Angela Davis in the 1970s is a highlight), and whenever there is need for her to rise to the occasion (standing in for opera legend Luciano Pavarotti at the 1998 Grammy Awards and President Obama's 2009 Inauguration) she exudes her masterful gifts with effortless professionalism.

Personally, the two people I felt summed her up the best were her long-time booking agent, Ruth Bowden, and musician Billy Preston.

Ruth Bowden: "She's always trying. She's always trying to get back on planes, always trying to lose weight, always trying to manage her money and figure out how to manage a relationship with a man. It's good to try, but if you're gonna succeed, you have to understand yourself. You have to look deep into yourself and figure out what makes you fail. Why do I have so many fears? Why am I a compulsive eater? Why do I win up chasing off all these men? Aretha does not want to look at herself. She doesn't want to critique herself. She doesn't know how to do that. She can't take criticism either from without or from within. The result is that nothing changes for her. The world keeps knocking on her door because the world wants her to sing. That will never change. But neither will she, because she's the hardest headed woman since Eve ate the apple. What it comes down to is this: no one can tell Aretha shit."

Billy Preston: "I don't care what they say about Aretha. She can be hiding out in her house in Detroit for years. She can go decades without taking a plane or flying off to Europe. She can cancel half her gigs and infuriate every producer and promoter in the country. She can sing all kinds of jive-ass songs that are beneath her. She can go into her diva act and turn off the world. But on any given night, when that lady sits down at the piano and gets her body and soul all over some righteous song, she'll scare the shit outta of you. And you'll know--you'll swear---that she's still the best fuckin' singer this fucked up country has ever produced."

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from the margins

Rating: ***
528 Pages
Published October 8th 2014 by Little, Brown and Company

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a belle's top 10 aretha franklin songs

Day Dreaming
Chain Of Fools
Sister From Texas
What A Fool Believes
I Say A Little Prayer
Don't Play That Song
Freeway Of Love
All The King's Horses
Until You Come Back To Me
I Never Loved A Man (The Way That I Love You)