While Aretha was praising God in James Cleveland’s church, she was also singing his glory on national television. On the same Friday night of the Amazing Grace recording, an episode of the network drama Room 222, shot a few weeks earlier, was aired in prime time. Although her speaking part was small, Aretha sang a stirring full-length version of “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” to people in need of rehabilitation.
In the dialogue within the show, a man watching her sing asked, “Is she a minister?”
“No,” answered a woman. “She’s not a minister, but she ministers.”
That same month, Time reported Jesse Jackson’s break from Operation Breadbasket to start Operation PUSH in Chicago. The article described Jackson’s split from other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference following Dr. Martin Luther King’s death. Aretha Franklin was mentioned among the “prominent blacks” helping Jackson raise $250,000 for his new organization. Others included Ossie Davis, Jim Brown, and Manhattan borough president Percy Sutton.
Aretha played the Apollo Theater in January, where she received a standing ovation for her one-hour performance, a benefit concert for families of the victims of the Attica prison riots.
On January 27, Mahalia Jackson died in Chicago. Over fifty thousand admirers passed by her casket at the Greater Salem Baptist Church. Her funeral, held at the Arie Crown Theater at McCormick Place, was attended by six thousand people. Aretha was there to pay tribute. She sang “Precious Lord,” the same hymn Mahalia had sung at the funeral of Dr. King.
“Mahalia represented the end of a glorious era that brought traditional gospel to the white masses,” said Billy Preston. “She was the reigning matriarch of that genre. Mahalia was also a purist. Aside from ‘Come Sunday,’ a religious song she sang with Duke Ellington as part of his Black, Brown and Beige suite, she avoided jazz at all costs. Clara Ward sang in Vegas, but not Mahalia. She wouldn’t carry gospel into a nightclub. She was the last of her kind. Some say that with her passing, Aretha assumed her throne, but that’s wrong. Aretha had already been crowned Queen of Soul, a category that included gospel—but much more. Mahalia wouldn’t have accepted the Queen of Soul title because soul sounds too street. That doesn’t mean that Mahalia didn’t sing with a blues cry in her voice. God knows there were jazz notes all over her style, but the story had to be religious. Even after Amazing Grace went through the roof, Aretha would never go the way of Mahalia. Aretha would never restrict herself to gospel. What’s really interesting about that, though, is that the black gospel community—both singers and fans—are insistent that you are either in one camp or the other. They don’t like their artists switching back and forth. Good examples are Little Richard or Al Green. They both tried to be as popular as gospel stars as they were in the R-and-B field but failed. Aretha’s the one exception. She’s accepted in whatever field she chooses to work. The doors of the church are always open to her. The saints welcome her whenever she chooses to honor them with her presence.”
In February, Aretha expanded her repertoire even further. On a network TV comedy show, she ventured into vocal impressions.
“From the earliest days, she had this knack for throwing her voice and sounding like just about any female singer out there,” said Cecil. “When we were kids, she could do everyone from Ruth Brown to Kay Starr. She was a phenomenal mimic. She always wanted to put it in her act, but I always thought it might be a little cheesy. But Aretha’s gonna do what Aretha’s gonna do. When Ruth booked her on the Flip Wilson Show, Aretha brought it up again. We mentioned it to Flip’s producers, who liked the idea. So she did Diana Ross, Sarah Vaughan, Dionne Warwick, and Della Reese. She nailed every single impression, and from then on, it became a regular part of her act. She thought it added to the entertainment value of her show. Many of her fans didn’t like it. They came to hear Aretha, not Aretha imitating Diana Ross. But other fans got a kick out of the accuracy of her impressions. I’d say the reaction was equally divided. But, as in all matters, Ree got the final vote, and the impressions stayed.”
A Jet magazine article underlined Ken Cunningham’s influence. He told the reporter, “The one most important change in Aretha’s life is that she is happy and she’s now being related to as a Black woman and a sister.”
On March 24, she celebrated her thirtieth birthday by giving herself a party at New York’s Americana Hotel. Guests included Richard Roundtree, Cannonball Adderley, Miriam Makeba, Nikki Giovanni, Betty Shabazz, and Quincy Jones, whom she had named the producer of her next album.
“Aretha asked me if I had any objections,” said Jerry Wexler. “And I assured her that I had none. I had produced ten albums on Aretha in five years and there was no reason why she shouldn’t venture out in a new direction. I thought Quincy was a good choice. He had done work for Atlantic in the past. He was one of the arrangers of the Genius of Ray Charles album. He had a reputation for missing deadlines, but I figured that, working with an artist of Aretha’s caliber, he’d have to be on time. The quality of his musicality was beyond reproach. I also liked the idea of an Aretha/Quincy jazz album. Soul ’69 had been a successful Aretha jazz record and it was high time for another. The locale was another plus. Quincy was based in LA. Aretha had cut studio records in Muscle Shoals and New York but hadn’t worked in a West Coast studio. I thought the change would be good.”
“This was the Quincy Jones that was getting his feet wet with soul and R-and-B,” said Cecil. “Ree and I saw Q as a jazz cat. We wanted a jazz album. He said he wanted to use some of the best jazz musicians, like Phil Woods and Joe Farrell.”
“That’s when the delays started,” said Wexler. “The delays drove me crazy. We were used to doing an Aretha Franklin album in a couple of weeks. Get the songs together, get the musicians, the backup girls, book the studio, and bang out ten songs in a few sessions. That’s how Aretha works best. She’s a very assertive recording artist. She likes to jump on the material. Deliberation isn’t her style. Procrastination on the part of the producer does not help.”
“Q had lots on his plate,” Cecil explained. “He was juggling lots of projects—writing for the movies and TV as well as producing the studio. I love the man but never felt that we got his full attention. I’m not saying that Aretha didn’t contribute to the delays. There were more than a couple of times when she canceled West Coast trips. Her fear of flying was building up. When we did arrive in LA for the meetings, Q was always the most hospitable and loving man you can imagine. But his concept was changing. He was talking less about a straight-ahead jazz album and more about a mixed bag—a jazz tune, an R-and-B tune, maybe a show tune. Aretha said she had several originals that she wanted to include. Q liked the idea. Wasn’t long before we were all over the place. Wexler was concerned. He was calling me every day, asking, ‘What the fuck is taking so long?’ ‘Take it easy, Jerry,’ I’d say. ‘The record is developing.’ ‘I don’t want it developing,’ he’d say, ‘I want it delivered.’”
What was delivered from the sessions that started in the spring and didn’t conclude till late summer was disappointing. That Quincy/Aretha project, Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky), was Aretha’s first Atlantic album that did not land in the top twenty-five on the pop chart. In Quincy’s autobiography, Q, he failed to give an account of his time in the studio with Aretha. The record got only a passing mention.
Neither fish nor fowl, it’s an unfocused hodgepodge of unrelated songs. The cover art, conceived by Ken Cunningham, is amateurish and bizarre—a strange sketch of an angelic Aretha, a dope needle, a black matador, and Quincy sleeping in the clouds. Aretha told interviewers that she was baffled by the drawings.
Two of Aretha’s originals—the title track and “So Swell When You’re Well”—are subpar. Her rendition of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s “Somewhere” from West Side Story is overwrought and strained. When she sings James Moody’s bebop classic “Moody’s Mood,” her vocalese feels rushed and uncertain. And yet for all its faults, Hey Now Hey cannot be ignored. Four of its tracks are fine. And one of those four—“Angel,” written by sister Carolyn—is among the powerful and poignant singles in Aretha’s career. It was the album’s only hit.
Aretha’s simple and sincere spoken introduction to “Angel” has become as much a part of the song as the melody or lyric. It’s the one song she has sung—and continues to sing—at her every concert. She never fails to start with her prologue:
“I got a call the other day,” she says. “It was my sister Carolyn saying, ‘Aretha, come by when you can. I’ve got something that I want to say.’ And when I got there, she said, ‘You know, rather than go through a long-drawn-out thing, I think the melody on the box will help me explain.’”
The opening line—“Gotta find me an angel, to fly away with me”—is, in the words of sister Erma, “a prayer with wings. It’s Carolyn’s most beautiful song—and that’s saying a lot because my sister wrote dozens of beautiful songs. But ‘Angel’ took it to a higher level—to the Curtis Mayfield/Marvin Gaye level, where there’s really something divine about her composition. I can’t tell you how proud we were of Carolyn. Daddy, Cecil, myself, and especially Aretha realized that she had finally realized the potential of her God-given gift.”
Aretha’s one successful original is “Sister from Texas.”
“She wrote it for Esther Phillips,” Cecil told me. “When Ree won her Grammy for Young, Gifted, and Black, she gave it to Esther, who that same year was nominated in the same category—Best R-and-B Album—for From a Whisper to a Cry, a great record that Aretha loved. Esther had fought off a lot of demons at that point in her life and the struggle wasn’t over. Like Aretha, Esther had been a child star. Aretha had deep respect for her and wanted to help the sister in every way she could. It was one of those times when Aretha showed the love and generosity that I knew to be at the core of her character.”
Her exposition of Bobby Womack’s “That’s the Way I Feel About Cha” is a study in overdubbing. A year earlier, Marvin Gaye had layered and harmonized his many voices in What’s Going On, and the impact was immediate. In covering Womack’s big hit from his Communication album, Aretha surely has Marvin in mind. She shadows herself to chilling effect. The intensity of three or four Arethas coming at you at once—especially out of that fat, kicked-back Bobby Womack pocket—is thrilling.
The final thrill on Hey Now Hey is Quincy’s reconstructed and newly expanded treatment of Avery Parrish’s “After Hours,” a classic 1940 instrumental hit for Erskine Hawkins that Aretha had learned as a little girl. When Reverend Franklin woke his prodigal daughter to play for his party guests back in Detroit, “After Hours” was one of his requests.
“It’s essentially a jam,” said Billy Preston, who played the original Avery Parrish part on the track. “I start off just duplicating the record. But then Q wrote this killer big-band chart that kicks in. I mean, it’s like a Basie chart. All Q did was tell Ree, ‘Sing the blues, baby.’ That’s all he needed to say ’cause Sista turns it out. She’s making up the words as she goes along. She’s moaning low. And before long, she’s screaming, she’s soaring, she turns in the best straight-up blues singing I’ve heard since Ray Charles. Funny thing is that at the end of what was supposed to be a pure jazz album, Aretha turns in about the best blues performance anyone’s ever done since the blues were invented somewhere in the middle of a muddy cotton field in Mississippi.”
In mid-June, before completing Hey Now Hey, Aretha gave a triumphant performance at Chicago’s Arie Theater.
“I’ve never seen her better,” said Ruth Bowen. “I was a little worried because she wasn’t exactly happy with the record she was making with Quincy. It was taking forever and the lack of progress put her in a bad mood. You wouldn’t know that, though, by her demeanor onstage.”
In the Chicago Tribune, Lynn Van Matre wrote about the concert:
“Even done up in a white satin dress with rhinestones for the first of two concerts Saturday, she wasn’t exactly pretty. But more important, she was beautiful, and even with her 12-piece recording orchestra and three backup singers in saris on stage with her, there was never any doubt who was the center of attention… and why.”
In the same edition of the Tribune, there was mention of her scheduled performance at the outdoor “Jail Show of 1972 for more than 3,200 inmates of Cook County Jail.”
“Ken Cunningham has a heart for the downtrodden and less fortunate,” said Cecil. “He was always arranging for Aretha to sing benefits and concerts for those who were ordinarily not privileged to see her. In that respect, Ken was a great influence. His political conscience went along perfectly with Aretha’s and mine. I remember that was the summer that Nixon was running for reelection. My good friend Marvin Gaye put out a highly political single called ‘You’re the Man.’ Like everything Marvin did, it was shot through with biting irony—a jab at the establishment. Aretha and I must have listened to that two dozen times in a row. That’s when she told me that she really wanted to collaborate with Marvin. Wasn’t long after that when I ran into Marvin in Detroit. ‘Any time, bro,’ he said. ‘I’m ready.’ For years we went back and forth, trying to make the arrangements. We were always running in different directions and it never happened. That still bothers me. I can only imagine what kind of music my sister and Marvin would have made together.”
Ruth Bowen also remembered that year’s hit parade, but for a different reason. “Sammy Davis Jr., one of my favorite people in all the world—I was very close to him and his mother—pulled a big surprise. Given the fact that we were in the soul era, everyone said that Sammy—essentially a Broadway belter—would never have another hit. Trying to be current, Sammy had actually signed with Motown, but they didn’t know what to do with him. Then this movie came out—Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory—that had a song called ‘Candy Man.’ Turned out to be Sammy’s only number-one hit in his career. ‘I’m happy,’ Sammy told me, ‘but I want a hit with the kind of soul song Aretha sings.’ ‘Count your blessings,’ I said, ‘and eat your candy.’”
Jet reported that in August, back in New York after her recording sessions with Quincy Jones, Aretha was into a vigorous cycling routine in Central Park. She told the magazine that she had embraced a new diet and exercise regimen that required her to drink lots of water mixed with vinegar and honey.
A watershed moment arrived in September with the release of Aretha’s version of “Wholy Holy,” the first single from Amazing Grace. When the record failed to climb the charts, doubts began to set in. Would the project prove to be a commercial failure?
“After Aretha’s huge success in the R-and-B and pop market,” said Wexler, “[Atlantic] thought promoting a gospel album would disappoint her secular fans. There was also a feeling that once you leave the field of gospel music—as Sam Cooke had—there’s no going back. So when ‘Wholy Holy’ failed to chart in any meaningful way, the naysayers had a field day. But not for long. Fans didn’t look to Amazing Grace for singles. As it turned out, they embraced it in its entirety, as an organic and whole listening experience. In less than six weeks, it sold more than a million copies. That’s unheard-of for a gospel or R-and-B album—especially one without a hit single. This record was on its way to making history. The reason had to do with nothing but quality. When quality is this fantastic, a record sells, no matter what genre. Take Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. No one would ever believe a jazz album would sell in the multimillions. But that particular jazz album is simply so good—the compositions, the playing of Miles, Coltrane, and Cannonball, the new modal sound—that it outstripped anything before or since. What Kind of Blue is to jazz, Amazing Grace is to gospel. It set a new standard.”
This was the same moment—the summer of 1972—when Wexler was hearing the final masters from Hey Now Hey.
“Naturally, I loved ‘Angel,’” Wexler said. “Everyone loved ‘Angel,’ and everyone knew ‘Angel’ was a hit. Carolyn saved Aretha’s ass on that record. If it weren’t for ‘Angel,’ the album would have been a total wash. Even with ‘Angel,’ the album was still seen as a flop. It slowed down Aretha’s momentum. Careers have trajectories, and, ever since joining Atlantic, Aretha’s was up, up, up. Quincy Jones has won his fabled place in the history of the music. His big band was wonderful. His small band arrangements for Dinah Washington were great. As a pop guy, he did Lesley Gore’s ‘It’s My Party,’ and you don’t need for me to tell you about the incredible work he did with Michael Jackson. When it came to Aretha, though, he didn’t serve her well. Maybe it was her fault. Maybe she was back on booze. Maybe she knocked him off his jazz course. I don’t know. All I do know, though, is that the issuance of that album represents the end of her golden age on Atlantic.”
Wexler was right. Aretha never recaptured the mojo or momentum of her first remarkable series of albums at Atlantic. Hammond and his colleagues had eventually run out of fertile ideas for the artist, and Wexler and his colleagues were on the verge of doing the same.