In late January, Aretha was in New York, where, at the Atlantic studios, she recorded “First Snow in Kokomo,” certainly her most abstract composition. It is the only Aretha song written out of rhythm. There’s no groove whatsoever. Aretha explained to me that Kokomo, Indiana, was the home of Ken Cunningham’s mother, a woman she adored. She had gone there with Ken on a family visit, and she fell into a reflective mood as she described how Cunningham and his New Breeder artist friends were hanging out and playing music. A couple expecting a child dropped by. The atmosphere was calm. For a few blissful days, Aretha found a way to get off the grid. No touring, no recording, no career demands.
“There were moments in her relationship with Ken when she could finally relax,” said Carolyn. “In many ways, that relationship was healing. You listen to ‘Kokomo’ and you begin to understand the kind of life that, from time to time, Aretha fantasized for herself—a life of domestic bliss. When she played the song for me in the studio, I felt sad, knowing that, given her talent and ambition, that kind of calm and easy life would probably never be realized. At the same time, it was a beautiful moment that she let you see the completely chilled-out Aretha. It’s Aretha as the observer of life rather than Aretha in the center of the action. Erma and I both sang background on the song and were extremely moved. It showed us that Aretha had the quiet heart of a poet. It was a very simple but also a very poignant statement. In the end, though, it was something of a fairy tale.”
“The song really resonated with me because it came at a time when I was at the end of my own fairy tale,” said Erma. “Mine was about having a big career and becoming a major star. In truth, I had forged a small career and was a minor star. In 1971, I felt it was time to wake up to reality. I loved singing. I loved show business. I loved the records I had made. But I could not maintain myself as an entertainer. I was no longer able to make a living. I decided to leave New York, move back to Detroit, and raise my children. I needed a regular job with a steady paycheck and benefits. I found that job at Boysville, a wonderful child-care agency and the largest in Michigan, where I worked my way up as a program developer and fund-raiser. I bought a house in northwest Detroit and was blessed when my daughter, Sabrina, then a teenager, moved in with me. I found a great deal of domestic happiness that eluded me for years. To me, that’s the theme of ‘First Snow in Kokomo’—the dream of domestic happiness.”
“Being a single woman without children,” said Carolyn, “I was in a much different position than Erma. My intention was to continue to pursue my career, both as a performing artist and writer. I still had my deal with RCA in place, and I was planning on not only composing the majority of the songs for my next album but producing it as well. I hated to see how Aretha never got the credit for being her own full-fledged producer at Atlantic. I was determined that would not happen to me.”
“Aretha came out of the sixties, when producers dominated,” said Ruth Bowen. “The artists were beholden to the producer. Wexler ran his operation with an iron fist. He wasn’t about to give up producing money to an artist. Look at Motown. The producers were in control. The artists were interchangeable parts. It wasn’t until Marvin Gaye rebelled against the system and produced his own What’s Going On that things began to change. But that wasn’t until 1971.”
“I started pushing for Aretha to get producer credit around the time of Spirit in the Dark,” said Cecil. “Everyone knew that she was the key element in putting those records together. But if you look at the albums, you keep seeing the names of Jerry Wexler, Tommy Dowd, and Arif Mardin as producers. It’s true that Jerry was the man in charge. It’s true that Tommy was a great engineer and Arif a great arranger. But Aretha had the big vision for how the songs should sound. Aretha had the arrangements—both instrumental and vocal—in her head. She provided the harmonies, she provided the grooves, she had the musical vibe that made her records distinct. But Aretha didn’t want to rock the boat. She was making big money with this team. She was turning out hit after hit, and she was afraid of making too many waves. She figured that she had enough problems of her own without creating problems with her record company. She was not a happy person.”
“The fast-paced thrills that are an essential part of show business do not promote personal happiness,” said Ruth Bowen. “Most entertainers are too overstimulated, by adulation or wealth, to keep their feet planted firmly on the ground. Aretha is no exception. Even though she was deeply in love with Ken Cunningham, she also had not cut off her relationship with Dennis Edwards. That complicated things enormously. But even more demanding than her romantic desires was her career. Her career wanted her attention and got it. And, believe me, she wanted her career as much as her career wanted her. If you ask me, that was her essential relationship.”
On the musical front, Wexler was able to coax Aretha down to Florida. On February 16, Aretha showed up at Criteria studios in Miami together with her sisters and her cousin Brenda. She was also armed with three original compositions.
“Aretha had written the basics of ‘Day Dreaming’ some time earlier,” said Carolyn, “and when I first heard it, I knew it was a monster. It was about Dennis Edwards and a famous limo trip the two of them had taken together from Saratoga Springs to New York City with the champagne flowing and the curtains drawn. It’s a head-over-heels-in-love song with a silky-smooth feel-good groove. Ree had Erma, Brenda, and myself come to Miami to sing it with her. We were all stoked. It had hit written all over it.”
“That was a marvelous day,” said Erma. “At that same session Aretha cut her ‘Rock Steady.’ Jerry Wexler had the good sense to fly in Donny Hathaway. He was an almost painfully shy guy, but, brother, when he played that opening line on organ, we were off and running. That line defined the song. Aretha absolutely tore up the vocal. We knew it was an instant classic.”
“The third original Aretha wrote for that session was ‘All the King’s Horses,’” said Cecil. “If ‘Day Dreaming’ was the upside of Aretha’s friendship with Dennis Edwards, ‘King’s Horses’ was the downside. As she said, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put their two hearts together again. I’d been trying to tell her that Dennis was hardly a staunch supporter of monogamy, but she had to learn that for herself. No matter, she got a couple of good songs out of that relationship. And on ‘King’s Men,’ she switched over to celeste, an instrument that gave the song a sad and lonely feeling.”
When released in 1972, “Rock Steady” and “Day Dreaming” were top-ten hits on both the R&B and pop charts. “All the King’s Horses” reached number seven on the R&B charts.
A month later, Aretha was in California. Wexler had convinced her to record a live album over three nights at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West in San Francisco, one of the principal palaces of late sixties/early seventies hippie culture. Making that happen wasn’t easy. The first obstacle was money.
“Aretha was getting from forty thousand to fifty thousand a show,” said Ruth Bowen, “and Graham wouldn’t pay anywhere near that. His club didn’t have that kind of capacity. Neither Aretha nor I was willing to compromise.”
“I stepped in and said that Atlantic would make up the difference,” said Wexler. “We’d underwrite the funding. That’s how much importance I ascribed to the project.”
The next problem was Aretha herself, who was not enamored of the alternative-culture crowd.
“She was afraid she didn’t belong there,” said Wexler. “She saw the flower children as devotees of bands like the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. She was afraid they wouldn’t understand or relate to her. She had, after all, come out of gospel and R-and-B. She saw hippies as somewhat alien. But I liked the venue—Bill Graham was a friend—and I saw it as a chance to broaden her market. The hippies loved the blues. Graham had booked B.B. King and Buddy Guy, and I saw no reason why Aretha wouldn’t be absolutely sensational in that setting.”
“I’ve played a million gigs,” said Billy Preston, her organist during those nights. “I’ve played a million churches, a million buckets of blood, a million nightclubs, and a million concert halls. But never, ever have I experienced anything like playing for Aretha at the Fillmore. It wasn’t that the hippies just liked her. They went out of their minds. They lost it completely. The hippies flipped the fuck out. Fans say that B.B. King Live at the Regal or Ray Charles Live in Atlanta or James Brown Live at the Apollo are the greatest live albums of all time. And, no doubt, they are great. But, brother, I was there with Aretha at the Fillmore. I saw what she did. And I’m proud to say that I helped her do it. What she did was make history.”
“Give King Curtis major props,” said Wexler. “By the time she got to the Fillmore, his Kingpins were tighter than tight. What Basie was to jazz, King was to R-and-B. His band was locked and loaded, a unit that included the Memphis Horns, a rhythm section of Billy on organ, Cornell Dupree on guitar, Jerry Jemmott on bass, Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie on drums, and Pancho Morales on congas. I suggested that, in addition to her repertoire of hits, she add ‘Love the One You’re With,’ a hit for Stephen Stills, and ‘Make It with You,’ a Bread hit. She smashed them both.”
“The highlight, of course,” said Billy Preston, “was when she left the stage to get Ray Charles, who was sitting somewhere in the back of the club. I know Ray well. I know how he hates to sit in. That’s not his style. But even Ray couldn’t refuse the Queen. That happened on our last night. It was a Sunday.”
“I rarely go out to hear anyone,” Ray told me. “But I happened to be in San Francisco that night when my friend Ruth Bowen called to say that Aretha was performing in the city and I should go see her. There are many female singers I like—I love me some Gladys Knight, I love me some Mavis Staples—but Aretha is my heart. It also doesn’t hurt that Aretha is the name of my mother. Anyway, I love Ruth and I love Aretha and I figured that I’d have my man find a table way in the back where I’d slip in, hear a set, and slip out. When I got there, who do I run into but my old friend Jerry Wexler. He tells me that they’re recording an album that night. ‘Ray,’ he says, ‘will you sing a song with her?’ ‘Don’t think so, Jer. Not tonight. Besides, I really don’t know her material.’ ‘Her material is your material, Ray.’ ‘Just came to listen,’ I say, ‘not to sing.’ So Jerry leaves me alone and I’m just digging the show. Excuse my French, but I have to say that this bitch is burning down the barn—I mean, she’s on fire. She does a version of ‘Dr. Feelgood’ that’s a hundred times better than the record. She’s turned the thing into church. I’m happy all over when suddenly she turns up at my table shouting to everyone, ‘Look who I’ve discovered! I discovered Ray Charles!’ That was a line that Flip Wilson was using on his TV show, when Columbus comes to America where he tells everyone he’s discovered Ray Charles. Next thing I know, she’s taking me by the hand leading me to the stage. What could I do? This is Aretha Franklin, baby. She sits me at her electric piano and has me doing her ‘Spirit in the Dark.’ Never played the thing before. Didn’t know the words. But Aretha’s spirit was moving me and I got through it. She had me play a long solo on electric piano. Couple of months later, Wexler called and said he wanted my duet with her on the record. I messed up the words so bad, I said no. But then Aretha called and begged me and finally I said, ‘What the hell.’ Looking back, I see it was history in the making. Aretha and I did some Coca-Cola commercials together that turned out great, but in terms of real records, this is the only one. At the end she calls me ‘The Right Reverend Ray,’ a label I’m proud to say has stuck.”
“I remember there was discussion about how she should end the concert,” said Cecil. “Aretha wanted to do ‘Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand),’ the Ashford and Simpson song that Diana Ross had turned into a megahit. Wexler thought it might be corny for the flower children. But Aretha argued that it was perfect because the hippies were all about handholding and love.”
“We were all crying,” said Brenda Corbett, Aretha’s cousin, who was a member of the Sweethearts of Soul vocal trio. “It was one of those times when you thought, despite what was happening in the world, that peace and love might really prevail. Of the hundreds of concerts I did with Aretha, this was probably the most exciting.”
“I saw it as a breakthrough,” said Wexler. “The crowd at the Fillmore was not only emotionally connected to Aretha but proved to be musically sophisticated. They were deep into every riff played by King Curtis and Billy Preston and Ray Charles. They followed Aretha’s every vocal nuance. If she had let them, they would have carried her from the stage and held her on their shoulders like a conquering monarch.”
Before he left, Wexler encountered a reporter who questioned him about Aretha’s drinking problem. “That pissed me off,” said Wexler. “Here she had just sung the concert of her life. She was at the absolute height of her artistic powers. And all this schmuck of a scribe wanted to know is was she smashed on booze. Well, who gives a fuck? Everyone at the Fillmore was high that night, me included. You had to be an idiot not to be high. If Aretha was a little tipsy, it didn’t make a shit. She sang her ass off and that’s all that mattered.”
Wexler described himself as Aretha’s greatest defender, but a Jet article implied that he was seeking to control her nonmusical activities. The magazine reported that “Atlantic Records’ bigwigs moved relentlessly behind the scenes to quietly, but quickly put the kibosh on Soul Queen Aretha Franklin’s publicly announced plans to stage a benefit concert in Los Angeles for imprisoned Black activist Angela Davis. As a result, there’ll be no such benefit by Miss Franklin in Miss Davis’ behalf.”
“That was absolutely bullshit,” said Wexler. “Aretha and I share a common politics. We are both fire-breathing liberal Democrats. We might have had different lefty causes, but not in a million years would Ahmet or I even hint that she suppress her point of view.”
Aretha backed up Wexler, as indicated by a follow-up report in Jet on May 27: “Aretha Denies Being Told Not to Perform to Aid Angela Davis: Soul Queen Aretha Franklin told Jet that she is angry over reports that officials at Atlantic Records (her label) had stymied her plans to stage a concert for Angela Davis.” Aretha insisted that neither “Atlantic nor anyone else” dictated what she could or could not do. She explained that the cancellation was due to confusion over dates for the proposed concert at UCLA.
“Aretha was always going off and scheduling benefits without checking with me,” said Ruth Bowen. “She drove both Cecil and myself absolutely crazy by willy-nilly arranging charity events. Her intentions were good. She has a big heart and a passion for genuine altruism, but when it comes to logistics, she’s not home. Supposedly she was committed to leaving the organizational piece of her professional life to her brother and me, but at least once a month I’d get a call from the head of some political or charitable organization telling me that Aretha had agreed to perform for free. Inevitably Aretha chose a date when I already booked her elsewhere. Massive confusion would result. I’d be left to clean up the mess. I usually did—but not always. There are some promoters as well as heads of nonprofit charities who will go to their graves furious at me.”
That summer she joined Stevie Wonder, who had just turned twenty-one and released his first self-produced album, Where I’m Coming From, at a benefit charity at Fisk University in Nashville. Aretha had told Stevie how much she liked the hit song he had written for the Spinners, “It’s a Shame,” and she wondered when he’d write a song for her. He told her that he already had. Aretha wouldn’t record the song—“Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)”—for another two years.
In May she played the Apollo, where, according to Billboard, she gave a stirring performance despite her tendency to cheapen her concerts with cheesy effects. Reviewer Ian Dove wrote, “‘She’s home’ ran the marquee billing. Aretha at the Apollo—the natural woman in a natural setting. There it was, the cohesion and knitting together of singer and audience and song… Aretha had King Curtis’ big band, her own chorus and it was more than enough without some attempt to dress up the evening with sets, curtains that dropped and rose throughout, and dancers.”
“Aretha thought she had the capacity to arrange her shows in terms of dancers and props,” said Ruth Bowen. “I’d argue with her that she needed help. But she had little patience with my arguments. So I turned the matter over to Cecil.”
“I stopped arguing with Ree about her shows,” said Cecil. “It wasn’t worth it. People came to hear her sing. If she overdid the stage settings, well, no one really cared. Same thing is true of the elaborate gowns she began wearing in the early seventies. Some fans complained they were over the top and didn’t reflect a sense of refined taste. Well, Aretha had her own taste in clothes, refined or not. Far as I was concerned, it was her taste in music that brought out the crowds. Wasn’t the stage lighting, wasn’t her hats or her plumage, it was her voice that gave the thrills and had ’em shouting for more—her voice and nothing else.”
Her voice was still in great demand in Europe when she returned in June. Her performance in Montreux, Switzerland, was a triumph.
“This was Aretha in her absolute glory,” Montreux Jazz Festival founder and director Claude Nobs told me. “It was hell trying to arrange the date. She must have canceled four times. But I was determined. I’d come back to her and beg. Then she’d make another demand—a bigger dressing room, an extra hotel suite—and I’d cave every time. I sent her flowers, candies, and chocolates. She said it was the chocolates that won over her heart. She agreed to come! I was afraid she’d arrive with that terrible orchestra she had used before in Europe. When I learned that she’d be using King Curtis and the Kingpins, I wept with joy. Cornell Dupree was on guitar. We treated her like royalty and she was so grateful she asked did I have any favors she might grant me? Yes, I did. ‘Play piano, Aretha. Please play piano as much and as often as you like. I’ll have the world’s finest Steinway grand onstage just for you. Play it. Stay on it. Do me the favor of playing piano all night long! You see, Queen Aretha, I think you’re the funkiest piano player out there. I adore your singing, but I adore your piano playing just as much!’ She laughed and said that yes, she would play. And she did. If you look at the set, which I videotaped, it’s unusually keyboard heavy. It’s splendid. Her ‘Dr. Feelgood’ and ‘Spirit in the Dark’ are masterful. This happened when the festival was celebrating its sixth year. We had imported everyone from Bill Evans to Duke Ellington to Carlos Santana. But Aretha was the highlight.”
In Italy, though, she ran into trouble. Jet told the story in its July 15 issue: “Soul Queen Fumes Over Treatment by Italian Cops.” Angry about an incident at the airport in Rome, Aretha vowed to call a conference of black men who would start, in her words, “to deal with how the Black woman specifically and Black people in general are treated around the world.”
“I’m going to get Muhammad Ali, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Huey Newton, Cong. Charles Diggs and we are going to have ourselves a conference and come up with a plan,” said Aretha after she described being “manhandled” by Roman law enforcement officers for no apparent reason. After a scuffle with the police, Aretha and two of her sons—Clarence and Eddie—were interrogated for four hours before being released. “The only reason I can think of why they did this,” she added, “was because I had to cancel my last concert in Rome but I played a series of nine one nighters and I was tired.”
The next brouhaha erupted over South Africa. Ruth Bowen was in the middle of the controversy, doing her best to protect her client. In its July 29 issue, Jet reported that Aretha had canceled her upcoming trip to South Africa. Ruth Bowen told the magazine that the singer would reschedule the tour, despite criticisms from the American Committee on Africa, Chicago chapter. The ACA had rebuked Aretha for agreeing to play in Soweto. Bowen claimed, though, that the postponement of the tour had nothing to do with those criticisms. “We have other dates in the USA to fulfill first,” she said. “We are not politicians. That committee, which is headed by a white man, called me. I told them that I am black and explain to me why a black entertainer can’t entertain black people. We are going to entertain blacks only. They want it and that’s what we are going over there to do. I am opposed to black artists going over there to entertain black audiences, then white audiences. I would shoot any of my acts that did it. But we are not going to deny our black brothers over there from seeing our acts.”
“The trip never happened,” said Cecil. “It got mired down in politics and confusion. We were hammered by both sides—left and right—and for no reason whatsoever. The left could have no beef with Aretha. The Franklins have always been a freedom-loving family with absolutely no tolerance for racial bigotry of any kind. Aretha would never have anything to do with a racist regime in any country. Our mission in South Africa was to point out the moral bankruptcy of apartheid, not endorse it. The right could not possibly claim that we had agreed to entertain all-white audiences, because nothing could be further from the truth. In the end, extremists on both sides polluted the waters, and South Africa was deprived of the chance to see one of their queens.”
A tragedy befell the R&B world on August 13, 1971. Aretha’s musical director King Curtis was murdered on the streets of New York City.
“When I got the call, I was dumbfounded,” said Wexler. “Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to process it because it came from out of nowhere. King was going home to the apartment building where he lived, on West Sixty-Eighth Street. King was at the top of his game—a healthy man, a vibrant man, a fabulous artist, a great guy. A couple of junkies were hanging out on the steps, shooting up and acting crazy. King told them to move on. They told King to get fucked. King made a move, but one of the junkies got to him first, stabbing him with a blade. The knife went through his heart. His life was over.”
“It was a devastating loss,” said Cecil. “King Curtis had proven to be the best conductor Ree had ever known. He was fast to pick up her cues and keys. He was a dynamite musician himself, both in the studio and onstage. He gave her that snap that every great rhythm singer needs.
“I’ll never forget the funeral. My father flew in from Detroit to officiate. Jesse Jackson spoke. Everyone was there—from Brook Benton to the Isley Brothers to Stevie Wonder to Dizzy Gillespie. Curtis’s band, the Kingpins, played ‘Soul Serenade.’ When Aretha sang ‘Never Grow Old,’ everyone lost it.
“The fact that King was killed in cold blood made it that more shocking and tragic. Like so many people, Aretha had a fear of sudden violence, and Curtis’s death added to that fear a hundredfold.”
Bernard Purdie, the great drummer who had been recording and touring with Aretha for years, took over King’s job.
“He was our leader,” Purdie told me, “and it was a sad, sad time. And the strange part is that Aretha didn’t even want his name mentioned. It was like she couldn’t take the sadness. If someone happened to say something about King, she went into her shell. I understood. She couldn’t handle it. When Aretha was around, it was better to act like it had never happened.”
In the summer of 1971, Aretha’s take on “Spanish Harlem,” written by Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector, shot up the charts and proved to be one of her biggest smashes, outselling Ben E. King’s original version recorded ten years earlier. At the same time, Atlantic scored another hit, the Donny Hathaway/Roberta Flack cover of Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” a song Aretha would sing five months later in a radically different context.
One of Aretha’s most vivid memories of this summer was Freda Payne’s “Bring the Boys Home,” a Vietnam protest song that Aretha told Wexler she would have gladly recorded had it been brought to her first. (The songwriting/production team, Motown’s Holland-Dozier-Holland, had sued Berry Gordy, left Motown, and signed Payne to its own label, Invictus.)
The warm months in the city were not without diversion. Jet reported that Aretha dropped by the Roman Pub in the Hilton Hotel to hear jazz/gospel/cabaret singer-pianist Emme Kemp, an artist she had long admired. Aretha stayed for only a tune or two, then left a bottle of champagne for Emme with a note that said, “After a day’s shopping, my feet hurt, stopped in for a delightful rest, thanks so much for the lift. Your sister in soul, Aretha.”
Returning to concerts, she played Madison Square Garden in October. In the New York Times, Don Heckman wrote, “The feeling Miss Franklin radiates to her listeners, the feeling that makes virtually every muscle in one’s body vibrate with an independent life of its own, was omnipresent.”
The arrival of winter saw another Franklin song soar to the top—“Rock Steady.” In November, she returned to Madison Square Garden to headline a tribute concert for her father. The audience included Coretta Scott King, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Abernathy, and Stevie Wonder.
Ever since the Time cover story in 1968 exposed her troubled relationship with Ted White and detailed her dark side, Aretha had scrupulously avoided in-depth interviews. But in the winter of 1970, she began to soften. She agreed, for example, to do The David Frost Show. At the end of the awkward interview, she was briefly joined by her dad before going to the piano and singing “Precious Lord.”
“That show was my coup,” said Ruth Bowen, “and it almost blew up in my face. Frost wanted it but Aretha was reluctant. So I arranged for the show to do a pre-interview with Aretha in my office. If she didn’t like the way it went, she could pull the plug. I’m glad to say that it went beautifully. Aretha was charming and had lots to say about everything. The questions were respectful, and her answers were right on point. The topics weren’t too personal, but personal enough for Aretha to display her confidence. At the same time, she and Ken were doing great, and she was happy to report on her romantic bliss. She agreed to do the show. At the actual taping, though, another Aretha showed up. This was timid-little-girl Aretha, the shyer-than-shy Aretha, the Aretha who would rather hide in the corner than be interviewed on TV. She sat there frozen. When Frost asked his questions, she gave one-word answers. She wouldn’t elaborate on anything. In the middle of the taping, she said, ‘Excuse me,’ got up, walked to her dressing room to get a cigarette, and came back on set smoking. Frost was stunned. He finally got her to open up a little, but not much. When Aretha decides to close down, the door stays shut.”
“As my career in child care developed,” Erma told me, “I worked with many psychologists and learned a great deal about mental health. I finally had a way of understanding Aretha’s volatile personality. I knew she was often depressed, and I knew that she had used drinking as an antidepressant. When she was drinking much less—and later in the seventies, when she stopped drinking altogether—her depression emerged unexpectedly. In between there were moods of hyperactivity when, in a manic state, she’d switch into overdrive. This is when she’d start planning to take over the world. She was going to buy her own restaurant. She and Ken were going to open their own clothing store in Harlem and call it Do It to Me. She was going to fire Ruth Bowen and open her own booking agency. But none of these grandiose plans ever happened.”
In Ebony’s cover story on her that December—“Aretha: A Close-Up Look at Sister Superstar”—she mentions the record label and booking agency and claims to have already signed her protégé, sixteen-year-old gospel singer Billy Always, the godson of Mahalia Jackson and the son of one of her dad’s former girlfriends. These business ventures, however, never made it off the ground.
The profile by Charles L. Sanders is a seven-page feature that follows the singer from her New York apartment to concerts on the road. We learn of her interest in all things African. She’s depicted as kindly, sympathetic, even-tempered, and abstemious. She says she no longer drinks. Despite having a cold in Greensboro, North Carolina, she visits seventeen-year-old fan Luther Williams. Still, she’s reticent because, according to the reporter, “she considers interviews in about the same light as she does, say, splinters under the fingernails: painful indeed. She has always been a very private, extraordinarily shy person.” The article goes on to say that her problems with Ted White “actually weren’t any more special than the problems that a whole flock of women wrestle with and try to solve. Aretha says that she’s feeling more confident in herself, how she used to want to appear more glamorous, but the Black Revolution, as she calls it, helped her attitude. ‘I suppose the Revolution influenced me a great deal, but I must say that mine was a very personal evolution—an evolution of the me in myself.’”
During the course of the interview, Aretha mentioned one plan that she would soon realize—returning to church to record, a homecoming that would become the artistic triumph of her career.