No one - no other singer, no other collection of musicians - deserves the prestige, the r-e-sp-e-c-t, implied by a full-tilt boxed-set CD retrospective more than Aretha Franklin. She was, and remains, the Queen of Soul. And by extension and timing, she reigned over a significant era of rock and pop music as well.
While label-to-label wandering has apparently precluded a single-package anthology spanning her fertile 30-year career, thanks to the Atlantic, Rhino and Columbia record companies, two song-stuffed sets surveying her groundbreaking work from 1961 to 1978 are newly available.And "groundbreaking" is the word for it.
"Writing at the start of the '90s, it's easy to forget that a quarter-century ago there was no one singing like Aretha Franklin," writes her key producer, Jerry Wexler. "Today, pop music is rich with glorious gospel voices, females in the Aretha mold."
Think about it. ("You've got to think!") We have Whitney Houston, Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan, Mariah Carey and even trans-Atlantic divas like Britain's Lisa Stansfield. But first there was Aretha. Yes, Billie Holliday, Dinah Washington and a handful of others may have pointed the way, and '60s stars like the Supremes, Mary Wells and Dionne Warwick opened doors. But beginning in 1967 with "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" and then "Respect," Aretha Franklin injected incredible energy, spontaneity, sass and soulful honesty into pop - and music hasn't been the same since.
Columbia's "Jazz to Soul" dips deepest into Franklin's past, reclaiming 39 remarkably varied songs recorded between 1960 (when the singer was 18 years old) and 1965. Legendary talent scout John Hammond produced her initial tracks, including her first charted single, "Won't Be Long," in which the essence of the future soul queen can indeed be detected, years before her breakthrough.
"Jazz to Soul" actually begins with the blues, as the first of the collection's two compact discs samples her work in that genre with songs like "Today I Sing the Blues," hints at her gospel roots with "Nobody Like You" and shifts into cool jazz. Columbia tried to fit Franklin into the chanteuse mold on standards like "Skylark," "Unforgettable," Cole Porter's "Love for Sale" and, most disastrously, "If Ever I Would Leave You," from the Lerner and Loewe musical "Camelot." Still, the mix of blues, jazz and popular favorites has a pleasantly smoky twilight atmosphere, and Franklin puts her stamp on even those songs with pedestrian instrumental ar-range-ments.
Early '60s pop is the subject of the second disc. Included are covers of "Mockingbird" and the Bacharach-David tune "Walk on By," in a treatment echoing Dionne Warwick's hit; a now-laughably girl-groupish "Operation Heartbreak," and hints of her special soul-tinged R&B on "Take It Like You Give It" and "Runnin' Out of Fools."
Taken together, the songs on "Jazz to Soul" display the singer's early diversity and emerging style, if not always in the most ideal musical settings.
The Atlantic years, on the other hand, were Franklin at her peak - and her best makes many another artist's peak seem a mere foothill. "Queen of Soul: The Atlantic Recordings," featuring 86 remastered tracks from 1967 to 1979, is a treasure trove released in an archive-mining cooperative project by Atlantic and Rhino Records, which specializes in creatively repackaging the oldies.
Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler returned Franklin to her piano, backed her with top session players and let her find and showcase her own voice. Together they raised the roof . . . late-'60s America was primed for what Franklin had to offer.
"Clearly, Aretha was continuing what Ray Charles had begun - the secularization of gospel, turning church rhythms, church patterns, and especially church feelings into personalized love songs," writes Atlantic founder Ahmet Ertegun, who, with Wexler and other witnesses to her evolution, contributes to an information- and trivia-stuffed booklet that's part of the "Queen of Soul" set.
The anthology chronologically traces Franklin's creativity from "I Never Loved a Man" through all of the 30-plus hits of a dozen years - "Respect," "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," "Chain of Fools," "Think," "Spanish Harlem."
But with four CDs, "Queen of Soul" has much, much more to offer, most of it on compact disc for the first time:
- Fascinating interpretations, like her takes on Warwick's "I Say A Little Prayer," Sam Cooke's "You Send Me," the Beatles' "Let It Be" and "Eleanor Rigby," the Band's "The Weight," Elton John's "Border Song (Holy Moses)" and, of course, her churchy transformation of Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water."
- Timeless ballads like "You and Me," Stevie Wonder's "Until You Come Back to Me," "You're All I Need to Get By" and "Angel" (co-written by her sister Carolyn).
- All together, literally hours of transcendent blues, rock, gospel, soul and funk.
"Queen of Soul" is wonderfully eclectic, a literal - and dynamic - library of moods and music. After all, Franklin has said, songs are her way of reaching out:
"Music is my way of communicating that part of me that I can get out front and share," she told Essence magazine in 1973. "It's my `here-I-am-where-are-you?' It's what I have to give; my way of saying let's find one another. Music is me with my hand outstretched, hoping someone will take it."
RATINGS: four stars (* * * * ), excellent; three stars (* * * ), good; two stars (* * ), fair; one star (* ), poor, with 1/2 representing a higher, intermediate grade.