Aretha is a heartfelt fan of the great voices, and in that respect too she is her father’s daughter. She freely expresses her admiration for all types of singers, from obscure gospel vocalists, like Jackie Verdell, to Peggy Lee—“one of the all-time hippest singers”—and she lavishly praises Leontyne Price. Among her favorite male singers is Little Jimmy Scott, a deeply soulful jazz artist who, back in the fifties, was close to both Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington and who sang a haunting version of a song dear to Aretha’s heart: “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”
“Everyone wanted to mother Aretha,” said Ruth Bowen. “When I first saw her in her father’s church, she looked like a lost child. Her eyes were filled with sadness. She looked afraid. Then when she got up to sing, this sound came out. It was gospel filled with blues. I mean, frighteningly strong blues, beautifully mature blues. After she sang, she sat back down and withdrew into her own little world. I know all the church ladies—especially those looking to get next to her father—were looking to mother her. I had this feeling she had dozens of mothers, but she really didn’t have any at all.”
At the very time of her life when she was dealing with maternal loss and searching for comfort, she had begun to sing in public. She remembered singing her first solo in church at age ten, the year her mother died.
“She was going to do ‘Jesus Be a Fence Around Me,’” Erma told me. “She learned it from the Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers version. She stood behind the piano and looked out into the big church—there might have been a couple of thousand people in attendance that day—and paused before starting. I wondered if she could do it. We all knew she had a beautiful voice, but we also knew she had been an emotional mess all week, crying her eyes out. It took her a minute to get it together, but when she did, it all came pouring out. The transition was incredible. She transformed her extreme pain to extreme beauty. That’s my sister’s gift. She had it as a child and has never lost it, not for a second.”
The pattern was set: the most traumatic parts of Aretha’s life would produce her most moving music. Misery would breed miraculous creativity. Introversion would blossom into extroversion. An insecure little girl would turn into a remarkably confident artist. As the turmoil troubling Aretha’s heart grew over the years to increasingly dramatic degrees, so did her adamant refusal to articulate it. The pain stayed silent in all areas except music, where, magnificently, it formed a voice that said it all. Music was the sole area where the truth could be told.
“Give the church some of the credit,” Billy Preston told me when we discussed Aretha’s early years. “The black church is about truth-telling. The black church is the most loving, encouraging audience in the world. Ain’t no shame in crying in church. Ain’t no shame in moaning low and shouting high. If you have the least amount of fear, those saints sitting up in church will make the fear go away with shouts of praise. That was my introduction to playing piano and singing, same as Aretha. After that kind of baptism as a performer, no audience ever scared me because, no matter where I was, I’d close my eyes and pretend to be in church. Did that my whole life. And I know for a fact that Aretha did the same. She was singing for the approval of the church, and that approval came unconditionally.”
But she was also singing for the approval of her father, her sole protector, and for the women who loved him and whose love she sought for herself.
“No doubt,” said Erma, “that when Aretha learned that Clara was interested in Dad and vice versa, Aretha became more interested in Clara. We all did. It was perfectly natural. She was a powerful and charismatic woman. She was a star. And even if she hadn’t been one of our father’s love interests, she would have influenced all three Franklin sisters as a singer. Her style was fabulous in every way.”
If Mahalia Jackson, adorned in a somber black or lily-white church robe, represented the dignity of gospel singing, Clara Ward, dressed in gowns of silver and gold, represented the dazzle. They were both extravagantly gifted vocalists whose baroque embellishments and unrestrained emotionality set the standard for decades to come. But while Mahalia stood flat-footed in the pulpit and belted out her prayers of praise, Clara worked the room. She moved while she shouted. She was also the first of the gospel stars to work the jazz and dinner clubs. Although Mahalia’s repertoire included the blues-inflected work of Thomas A. Dorsey, she sang in churches and concert halls, making a rare exception with her celebrated appearance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Clara would go almost anywhere to spread her gospel, even to Vegas and Broadway. Like C.L., Clara wanted the widest possible exposure.
God was in the center of this formulation, but money was also in the mix. Clara’s mother, the formidable Gertrude Ward, was gospel music’s version of Mama Rose, Gypsy Rose Lee’s unstoppable stage mom. The original group, the Ward Trio, began in the early forties when Clara was a teenager. The other members, Mother Gertrude and big sis Willa, were soon augmented by more powerful voices, notably the great Marion Williams, whose piercing soprano made a mighty impression on Aretha and both complemented and rivaled Clara’s commanding lead.
According to Willa, her mother ran the operation with an iron hand, displaying strong entrepreneurial gifts in establishing her own management firm, booking agency, and publishing company. During an era when promoters cheated gospel artists unmercifully, Gertrude held her own. She also kept a tight hold on Clara.
“Everyone has a Mother Gertrude story,” James Cleveland told me. “Her take-no-prisoners personality was legendary. When I was playing piano for the Caravans, I saw [Clara] performing in one church with Reverend Franklin. After the services, the two of them began to leave together. When Mother Gertrude saw that, she called out, ‘Frank, return my daughter to me this very minute!’ Now, Frank was not a retiring man. He was not accustomed to being ordered around. But when Gertrude gave commands, even Reverend obeyed. He led Clara back to her mother. Later that night at the hotel, after Gertrude had gone to sleep, I did notice a couple walking out of the lobby that looked suspiciously like Clara and Frank.”
Ruth Bowen, who knew Clara well, said, “It’s so touching to me that Aretha picked Clara as a role model. I say that not because Clara wasn’t a lovely person—she was—but she was, like Aretha, a troubled and insecure soul. Aretha’s father was the love of Clara’s life. And the man would never commit to her, another reason Clara suffered so deeply. I’m not saying Frank didn’t love her, but he was hardly the marrying kind. His sexual appetite required a large variety of women. That fact tortured Clara, who wanted him and him alone.”
In How I Got Over, Willa’s autobiography, Willa wrote that Clara had become pregnant at seventeen, got married, and, due to the burden of rough travel and countless performances, lost the child. She divorced at eighteen and never married again. Willa believed that because their mother chased off Clara’s male suitors, Clara found safety in several sexual relationships with women. In the gay gospel world, homosexual encounters were commonplace. According to Willa, Clara was fragile. She was plagued with health issues and suffered serious breakdowns. “Her glamorous gospel image was part of the role model Aretha embraced,” said Ruth Bowen, “but so was Clara’s struggle to find happiness and her fruitless attempt to escape a domineering parent.”
“There’s only one man who could have taken on Gertrude and won,” said Billy Preston, who worked the gospel circuit as a wonder-boy singer and organist. “That was C. L. Franklin. Gertrude scared all the others away. Clara was her cash cow, and she wasn’t about to lose control. I think that’s why Clara clung so tightly to Frank. She saw him as the knight on the white horse who could help her escape her mama. When Frank failed at that task, Clara was crushed. She never gave up on him, but at the same time, he never came through for her.”
“Reverend Franklin was my man,” B.B. King told me. “He was a great storyteller and a proud black man at a time when pride was a rare commodity in our community. He made us prouder people. But I also have to say that he took me by surprise one night in the fifties when he showed up at a club in Chicago with Clara Ward. I wasn’t surprised that he came to hear the blues and I wasn’t surprised that he was dating Miss Ward. They’d been going together some time. But back in my dressing room when she said something Reverend didn’t like, he hauled off and whacked her so hard across the face she fell to her knees. I was too shocked to say a word.”
“Frank and Clara had a strange thing going,” said James Cleveland. “She adored the man, and the man adored her. But their mutual-admiration society broke down on a regular basis, and when it did, Clara bore the brunt. Given the times, it wasn’t all that unusual for a man to brutalize a woman. In that sense, Frank was a man of his times. I saw him lose it with Clara on several occasions. She was surprisingly passive about it all. Usually she just took it, but sometimes she’d get mad and say she was through with him. Then he’d send her flowers and candy and they’d start up all over again. She never got over Frank. Ever.”
“My father may have deserted other women,” Erma explained, “but we never had to worry that he would desert us. He did give us that security. I know that Carolyn and I felt that security strongly. Cecil certainly did. He never made us feel that we had to earn his approval. And yet my sister Aretha worked harder than anyone for that approval. Maybe that’s what made her so great.”
“I can’t remember at what age Aretha saw Clara Ward play piano in our living room,” brother Cecil told me, “but I was probably ten and Aretha eight. Of course, Daddy had lots of artists come out to the house for his parties. Probably the most amazing was Art Tatum. He had one eye and played like he had four hands. Aretha and I sat on the landing on top of the staircase and looked down in amazement. We’d never heard anyone play these kind of arpeggios and flourishes. Sometimes during Daddy’s parties there was just drinking and dancing with music in the background, but when someone like Art Tatum played, it turned into a concert. Everyone stopped and listened in rapture.
“I remember on another night when Arthur Prysock sang while his brother Red played sax. Oscar Peterson came by with his bass player Ray Brown. That’s when Ray was married to Ella Fitzgerald and she was over that night as well. All us Franklin kids got to hear Arthur and Ella accompanied by Oscar Peterson. Talk about a treat! After they’d been playing for more than an hour, Oscar said to Daddy, ‘Reverend Franklin, I never expected to ever play a jazz set in the home of a minister.’ In turn, Daddy said, ‘Oscar, I never expected the Lord to gift me with such beautiful music in my very own living room.’
“That was just one evening among dozens. Royalty came to visit on a regular basis. Duke Ellington once stopped by to meet with my father and wound up playing a beautiful piece on the piano. Like my dad, Ellington was a modern man who looked to the future, not the past. When I told him how much I loved jazz, he told me, ‘Well, son, you’ll want to be listening to a cat named Monk. He’s doing it differently.’ Monk soon became one of my heroes.
“Aretha took a different path. She spent hours in my room listening to my growing jazz collection. But her magical moment came the night Clara Ward got happy on our grand piano. Miss Ward did a solo concert of all her hits, like ‘Surely He’s Able’ and ‘Packin’ Up.’ But she also improvised like a jazz musician. Aretha didn’t miss a note, and the next day she was on the piano playing everything she’d heard Clara play. It wasn’t long after that Aretha learned Avery Parrish’s ‘After Hours,’ a popular blues song from Daddy’s day. Daddy loved it. Sometimes during his parties, Daddy came up upstairs and woke up Ree. It might have been three or four a.m., but he wanted his friends to hear her play ‘After Hours.’
“Everyone who’d gone to our church knew Ree could sing ’cause she started so young. But her piano playing was a whole separate talent. Later on in the fifties, when Eddie Heywood had his instrumental hit ‘Canadian Sunset,’ not an easy piece to play, Aretha’s version became another favorite at Daddy’s parties.
“Here’s how it worked—Aretha heard a song once and played it back immediately, note for note. If it was an instrumental, she duplicated it perfectly. If it was a vocal, she duplicated it just as perfectly. She got all the inflections right, voice and keyboard. Her ear was infallible. We always knew that she possessed a different kind of talent. That’s the talent they call genius. You can’t learn it. You just have it.”
I once asked Reverend Cleveland if he thought C. L. Franklin had exploited Aretha’s genius.
“Depends what you mean by exploit. If you write a song, you want it exploited. That simply means you want it sung and recorded. If you have a child with genius, you want that genius exploited as well. You want your child heard. You want her potential fulfilled. Frank was an ambitious man. He wanted to enlarge his audience at every turn. A singer himself, he realized the power of music to carry God’s message. He wanted to surround himself with the most powerful singers. That his own daughter turned out to be the most powerful of all was something that brought him immense pride. He saw it as his obligation to turn Aretha into a star. Anything else would have been a travesty.
“After Frank hired me as minister of music, in the fifties, I moved into the Franklin home. I got a bird’s-eye view of that father-daughter relationship. And yes, there were times when Frank got her out of the bed in the middle of night to show off her singing and playing in front of his famous guests like Nat Cole or Billy Eckstine. I’m not sure any eleven-year-old girl wants to be awoken in the middle of the night to play for a crowd of heavy-drinking partygoers. And yes, maybe that didn’t make her feel especially good. But at the same time, she shared her father’s drive. She inherited that drive.
“If I was in the living room working out a new arrangement for the choir on piano, Aretha would slide on over and sit on the bench beside me. She’d watch me put together the chorus. She’d hear how I was going to voice the tenors against the sopranos. She saw how octaves worked. She saw how melody worked with harmony and how harmony worked with rhythm. She saw it all, and, just like that, she could do it all. They call me one of her teachers, but I taught the young Aretha Franklin very little. She simply watched, and then she did.
“Was she exploited? If she hadn’t been, she would have been furious. She would have seen that as a betrayal on the part of her father. After her talent was manifest, she wanted to be with Frank every minute of her life—in church, on the road, and finally at those parties where he presented her to the best entertainers in the world. It was her living room where she met Dinah Washington.”
In 1954, Dinah Washington was a huge star, and Aretha, a preteen, was sitting at the top of the staircase watching the party below. That’s when she first saw Ted White. He was the man who would, in the sixties, become Aretha’s first husband, her first important manager, and a figure strong enough to whisk her away from her father’s domain. White had the reputation of a gentleman pimp. That night, Aretha watched him scoop up and carry off an inebriated Dinah Washington, whose musical path from gospel to blues to jazz to rhythm-and-blues to pop was the very route Aretha would soon seek to travel.