When Aretha called to say she wanted me to coproduce her second Arista album, of course I was pleased,” said Arif Mardin, “but my first question was, ‘Who’s the other producer?’ Her answer came quickly. ‘Me,’ she said. When she was in the studio, she was focused. But there were several trips to Detroit to see about her dad that understandably had her distracted. As it turned out, she actually only coproduced two of the songs that she had written—neither of which was especially strong—‘Kind of Man’ and ‘Whole Lot of Me.’ She also coproduced and wrote the rhythm arrangement for ‘Truth and Honesty,’ a snappy little ditty by Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager, and Peter Allen.
“Like many artists who have written hits, Aretha was convinced that she could write another ‘Dr. Feelgood,’ ‘Think,’ or ‘Spirit in the Dark,’” Arif told me. “She was proud of her compositions, and, even if I had tried, I could have never dissuaded her from including them on her record. Clive Davis is a true diplomat, though, and rather than discourage her songwriting, he urged her to collaborate. That’s how she got together with Sam Dees and George Benson, a hot artist at the time. George had just won a Grammy for ‘Give Me the Night,’ written by Rod Temperton, who had enjoyed great success with Michael Jackson on Off the Wall. Sam, George, and Aretha wrote ‘Love All the Hurt Away,’ which became the title of the record and an R-and-B hit. She was certain it’d cross over and become a pop hit, but it never got higher than number thirty-six.
“Overall, Love All the Hurt Away was a very ambitious album that did not quite realize its ambitions. It was Aretha’s idea to cover ‘It’s My Turn,’ the pop smash Michael Masser and Carole Bayer Sager had on Diana Ross. It was one thing to cover a sixties soul chestnut like Sam and Dave’s ‘Hold On, I’m Comin’ ’ or a rock anthem like Keith and Mick’s ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’ But ‘It’s My Turn’ was only a year old, and it was far too early to forge a cover version. Aretha disagreed. She felt strongly that the song was more suited to her style than Diana’s. Yes, but Diana already had the hit. ‘I don’t care,’ Aretha said, ‘it’s my turn.’ She sang the song with undeniable conviction. She did feel it was her turn for a pop hit, but, alas, the marketing people agreed with me. They saw no hope for its success as a single.
“I had more hope for a song like ‘Living in the Streets,’ a Rod Temperton song that bore traces of his work with Heatwave, his own band, and his productions for Michael’s Off the Wall and, later in the eighties, Thriller. I’m not sure, though, that Aretha’s voice was quite suitable for the kind of slick dance grooves that were Rod’s specialty. ‘Living in the Streets’ became a decent album cut and nothing more.
“We used many of the same sidemen—pop stars like the guys from Toto, and pop-oriented musicians like David Foster, Greg Phillinganes, and Louis Johnson, who’d worked with Quincy and Michael Jackson, and bass player Marcus Miller, who’d started recording with Luther Vandross. We definitely pulled out all the stops. Other than the title track, though, there were no hits. On the other hand, the reviews were strong, and I think the overall quality of the album gave steam to Aretha’s slow-building resurgence.”
“Aretha loves all her albums,” said Cecil, “but the thing she loved most about Hurt was the cover. She got George Hurrell to do the photography. He’s the guy who shot those old stars like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. She wanted the film noir black-and-white look of old Hollywood. The image of her, turned out in her white fur shawl, sitting on a stack of suitcases, made her feel she had finally arrived. In the movie capital of the world, she was sitting pretty. Yes, Mr. DeMille, she’s ready for her close-up.”
The record has its charms. The title song is an infectious ballad, and it’s fun to hear her riffing with the Stevie Wonder/Donny Hathaway–influenced George Benson. I like her assault on “It’s My Turn.” It’s thrilling to hear her go full throttle on Masser’s already over-the-top anthem to the glories of self-assertion. For the rest, though, the album feels like an out-of-breath attempt to catch up to current musical fashion.
The New York Times’ Stephen Holden felt otherwise. When he reviewed the album on October 11, he wrote, “It has been nine years since Aretha Franklin, the greatest soul singer of her generation, made an album as strong and as emotionally compelling as ‘Love All the Hurt Away.’”
During this same period, Aretha addressed her image in a cover story in Jet. The headline read: “Aretha Franklin Tells Why Weight Doesn’t Worry Her Anymore.” She argued that when she was a size eight or nine, she looked too small. “I feel better at a thirteen,” she said. “It looks better to me, more healthy… I would certainly prefer to be healthy and well-fed than svelte and hungry.” She added that Glynn liked her with extra padding.
“If you read her press from any period of her life,” said Ruth Bowen, “it’s always the same. It always comes down to four words—I have no problems. Aretha’s philosophy is, if you say it enough, maybe it’ll come true. Sweep the problems under the rug. Don’t worry about anyone looking under those rugs ’cause no one’s allowed in your house.”
That fall Aretha played the Claridge Hotel in Atlantic City. Included in the show was a medley of old-fashioned showbiz songs, among them “Up a Lazy River,” “Me and My Shadow,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and “Over the Rainbow.”
Two decades after she had sung this material on her early Columbia records and at her nightclub performances, they remained part of her act.
“She got criticism that singing something like ‘Swanee’ might be corny,” said her longtime musical director H. P. Barnum. “But Aretha was never too moved by criticism. She’s not prone to change. She sees herself as an old-fashioned entertainer who wants to put on a splashy show to please all the different kinds of fans in the audience. She comes from that school that says you better cross over or you’ll wind up crossing back. Crossing over means going for the most mainstream material. Besides, she likes Judy Garland and knows that if she sings a Judy Garland song, she’s gonna sing it better than Judy ever could. That gives Aretha great satisfaction. At the same time, she’s concerned with her core audience—the R-and-B audience. She realizes in that arena she’s got to be current. That’s why in her live show she’ll have me, an old-school conductor, taking charge. But in the studio, you best believe she’s running after the hottest producer around. Like Ray Charles, you can get by at these big venues in Atlantic City and Vegas by performing your old hits. But if you want to stay on the radio, you need new hits. Aretha never stopped chasing after new hits.”
“Because Love All the Hurt Away had only one semi-hit,” said Arif Mardin, “I wasn’t surprised that I was not asked to produce her third Arista album. I suspected she’d go off after one of the more up-to-date guys, like Rod Temperton. Rod wasn’t available, but Luther Vandross was. Luther proved to be the best choice she could have made. Yet for all their artistic compatibility, I heard that it wasn’t a match made in heaven.”
Luther laughed when I asked him about Arif’s comment.
“Well,” he said, “it’s a long story. Are you ready for the epic tale?”
“I am.”
“Understand where I was in 1981. My first record, Never Too Much, had come out—and it was a hit. Turned gold and made me a bunch of money. Even though I’d grown up in the projects of New York, I was already used to money, since I’d made a small fortune doing backgrounds and jingles. Patti Austin and I were probably the most successful studio singers of our time. I was also in Chic. In fact, that’s me saying ‘Yowsah, yowsah, yowsah’ on ‘Le Freak.’ I paid my disco dues and then some. It was one thing to sing behind David Bowie or Bette Midler but another to break out on my own. That happened when I entered my thirties. I saw myself as an artist who had been raised on the glorious voices of the great divas. I also adored the girls’ groups, especially the Shirelles. But it was the female solo stars that captured my heart. To me, the holy trinity of divas consisted of Aretha, Diana, and Dionne. It never dawned on me, though, that it would be my fate to produce all three of those stars. I knew I could produce. I wrote, arranged, and produced Never Too Much, but my concentration was on my own career, not helping revive someone else’s.
“For the first time in my life, I started doing interviews with major publications. Naturally I talked about my influences, and naturally I kept mentioning Aretha. I told Rolling Stone that the idea of producing Aretha one day would be a dream come true. Turned out that day would be tomorrow. The afternoon the interview ran, Clive Davis called me. ‘Are you serious about producing Aretha?’ ‘Well, yes,’ I said, ‘you caught me by surprise—but of course. No one in his right mind could pass up the chance to produce the Queen.’ ‘I’ll make it happen,’ Clive said. ‘When?’ ‘Soon.’
“A week later I was at home when they said Aretha Franklin was on the phone. I started whooping it up like a little boy on Christmas morning. Ran to the phone. ‘Aretha?’ ‘Yes, this is Miss Franklin. Is this Mr. Vandross?’ That’s when I first saw that it wasn’t gonna be all hugs and kisses. Miss Franklin was formal. Miss Franklin wanted to know if Mr. Vandross had any songs that were suitable for her. ‘Not now, Miss Franklin, but I can sure write some.’ ‘Do that, Mr. Vandross, and I’ll give you my evaluation soon thereafter.’
“Clearly I had to audition. Well, why not? The Queen has certain prerogatives. One of them is that her subjects must submit their credentials before being awarded an audience. I asked her to give me a little time. She said that she didn’t have a lot of time. If I wanted to be considered as a producer, I’d have to turn out product quickly. She also added that she enjoyed that rendition of ‘House Is Not a Home’ that I did on Never Too Much. ‘I’ve been planning to sing that song myself,’ she said. ‘What would you think of including it on my album?’ ‘I’d think you’d be better served by originals, songs fresh and new.’ ‘I dare to say that I’m also known for doing covers.’ ‘You’re known for singing anything and everything beautifully, Miss Franklin.’ ‘Why, thank you, Mr. Vandross.’
“It was a strange and somewhat strained conversation. The Aretha that I had heard throughout my entire childhood on the radio—warm and down-home—wasn’t the Aretha I heard on the phone. I’d get to know down-home Aretha, but the planet would have to take a couple of spins before that happened.
“Working with Marcus Miller and Nat Adderley Jr. on my first album, we had already formed a production team. Along with Doc Powell’s guitar, Marcus’s bass, and Nat’s keyboards, I had the rhythm section of life, silky-smooth with just a taste of the dance-disco-dazzle that delights the club-goers. In quick order, Marcus came up with the track. The track was on fire. I knew it was a smash. I wrote the words to the rhythm. Wasn’t looking for anything deep. The thing just jumped off the tape, so I called it ‘Jump to It.’ I was all about, hey, respond to the rhythm, respond to love, jump to love.
“Aretha heard it and loved it. She was ready to roll, but the challenge was my schedule. I was touring heavily behind my own album, gigs practically every weekend. I had to fly in to LA from wherever I was—Chicago or Atlanta or Miami. At the same time, I had agreed to produce an album on my label mate Cheryl Lynn, also in LA, so I was doing three things at once. I was a little frazzled.
“The sessions with Aretha began with the same formality. But instead of calling me Mr. Vandross, she changed it to Vandross. From then on I’d always be Vandross to her, never Luther. When I told her it was okay to address me by my first name, she said, ‘If I call Curtis Mayfield [by the name] Mayfield, I know you have no objections if you’re Vandross.’ ‘If I do anything half as good as Sparkle,’ I said, ‘you can call me [late] for dinner.’ ‘Dinner is already here,’ she said, indicating that her assistant had brought us enough fried chicken to feed an army.
“After dinner, Aretha finally indicated that I should call her Aretha. We bonded over food. We loved the same stuff—everything greasy and sweet. We struggled with the same overeating addiction. I’m certain we enabled each other because when Aretha and I were in the studio, good food was as much a part of our collaboration as the harmonies. Good food always brought Aretha down to earth.
“There were a few sharp disagreements. Aretha doesn’t like her vocals critiqued—and understandably. Hey, she’s Aretha Franklin. On the other hand, the heart of the album was comprised of the four songs that I wrote either alone or with Marcus. We also knew damn well that ‘Jump to It’ was a stone hit, and, because we had composed it, we knew how it should sound. It was a production thing, a vision thing. I could have well kept the song for myself, sung it on my second album and had a surefire smash. But we had it earmarked for Aretha, and as long as Aretha was willing to bend a little to her producers, we were game.
“The bending was a problem. For example, I wanted to establish the groove with a long instrumental intro. Aretha didn’t think the listener would wait that long to hear her voice. I assured her that the listener would be hooked on the groove and would be delighted to wait. She wanted to come in sooner. I said no. ‘Who’s the one with the most hits here?’ she asked. Of course the answer was her. I just had one; she had dozens. ‘But who’s the one with the latest hit?’ I asked. She didn’t answer. She stormed out.
“But she came back. And she sang it the way I wanted it. Not only that, she came up with that whole spoken business of her chitchatting with her girlfriend Kitty about dishing the dirt on who’s drop-kicked who. She fell into the story with a coyness that suited the song perfectly. I also have to say that Aretha rode the groove like a surfer riding a wave. She rode it better than anyone could have, throwing in just the right scats and side licks that punctuated the lyrics in all the right places.
“Aretha’s not only a great soaring singer, a great gospel singer, soul singer, and jazz singer, but she’s a percussive singer. By that I mean she has the sensibility of a drummer. So if a groove is slick, she’ll find a way to kick back and push it in the most subtle ways. ‘Jump to It’ is basically a rhythm thing. For it to work, enormous vocal variations are required to keep it interesting. Aretha has variations to spare. The track was already hot, but she completely burned it up and set the studio on fire.”
When “Jump to It” was released in the summer of 1982, it shot to the top of the R&B charts, her first number-one hit since her work with Curtis Mayfield five years earlier. At age forty, Aretha had emerged from her sales slump to reconfirm her commercial status.
When I first heard “Jump to It,” I reacted as most Aretha fans did. I loved it. I couldn’t stop listening to it. I found the groove irresistible. Luther had relit the fire. Over three decades later, I still rank it among her greatest confections. It’s hardly profound, but it’s sweet and funky as the devil.
“I didn’t think Aretha wanted profound,” said Luther. “Aretha was looking for airplay and single sales. Those days of ‘Respect’ and ‘Think’ were behind her. She didn’t want to be political. She wanted to be current. She wanted to sound fresh. I was fascinated to see that her focus was more on the container that the content. On a personal level, she played it very close to the vest. She’d sit down and rap with me but she kept the talk light. Before I met her, I had the wrong idea of what she might be like. Having grown up on Ebony and Jet, I remember reading all these articles about her. Seems like there was one every week. In every one, you got the idea that she lived the perfect life. Happy at home. Happy with her man. Her career going full blast. She had it all. But in person, I encountered this rather lonely woman who wasn’t happy at all. Naturally, a lot of that had to do with her daddy. Our work together all took place while he was still in a coma. But beyond that, I sensed that her marriage was also a source of anguish. Reading in between the lines, it seemed clear that her relationship to Glynn Turman was on the verge of collapse. She was also fighting with her sisters.”
“Long ago I lost track of all the times Aretha wasn’t talking to me,” said Erma, “but I do recall things being especially tense in the early eighties. She had accused me of not getting the right care for our father. We had words, and for a while we had no communication. But when she started recording with Luther, things took a turn for the better. I think she realized that she finally had found the right producer. She used Cissy Houston and Darlene Love on some tracks but invited our cousin Brenda and me to sing on others. I took note that the song she asked me to do backgrounds on was called ‘I Wanna Make It Up to You,’ the thing she’d written for her and Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops. To us, Levi has always been one of the strongest soul singers, and their duet is about the best Aretha had ever and would ever do. I also sang on her cover of the Isley Brothers’ ‘It’s Your Thing,’ and we reminisced about the time she and I had once partied with the Isleys at their home in New Jersey. It was a good reunion. I wish Carolyn had been there as well. Ironically, though, just as Aretha and I made up, she and Carolyn fell out. Can’t remember why.”
“Luther brought a lot of light back in Aretha’s career,” said Cecil, “and there’s no doubt he gave her a contemporary sound. Can’t stress enough the importance of this. We’d seen that the move from Atlantic to Arista was a good one. It was Clive who identified Luther, and it was Luther who had what the kids wanted to hear. I’d call it a born-again moment.”
Billboard’s review from July 31 summed up the industry’s attitude about Jump to It.
“Arista’s efforts to return the Queen of Soul to the top of the pop charts may pay off with this frisky, eight-song collection, while the title cut is already causing excitement on black radio.”
Nelson George, in Billboard on September 25, wrote that the highlights of her appearance at the Budweiser Superfest in Madison Square Garden were her duets with Smokey Robinson and Luther: “The contrast between her gospel shouts and Robinson’s crooning delivery on ‘I Want to Make It Up to You’ was thrilling… Vandross came out to sing a chorus of ‘Jump to It’ with Franklin and show that he too could have had a hit with this bubbly dance tune.”
After completing the Jump to It project, Aretha told the press that she’d never felt better. When reporters mentioned the issues she was facing—her dad’s ongoing coma and her marital difficulties—she dismissed them. She kept saying that positive people see life positively—and that’s all there was to it.
A perfect example was in the August 9 issue of Jet, in which she said that her dad, although he had been unable to speak for the past thirty-six months, was “a picture of health and communicates with his eyes and smiles.”
“Aretha was convinced that one day he’d come out of that coma,” said Carolyn, “and everything would be rosy. The doctors said that would never happen. Aretha saw expressions on his face—happiness in his eyes and smiles on his face—that no one else saw. She was imagining.”
That wasn’t all that was going on. On August 23, Jet reported that “Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin and her leading man, actor Glynn Turman, won’t talk about the threatened dissolution of their two-career marriage because they’re too proud and feel their problem is personal and private.”
“When it comes to admitting failure, no one expresses more pride than Aretha,” said Ruth Bowen. “There is no failure in her universe—or if there is, it can never be her fault. I remember talking to her just before the breakup with Glynn became public. ‘Ruthie,’ she told me, ‘don’t believe those lies. I’m happier than any time in my life.’”
“Poor baby was miserable,” said Erma. “And understandably. Her marriage to Glynn was billed as the perfect Hollywood relationship. A handsome, dashing, and successful actor marries a beautiful, glamorous, and successful singer. After her fairy-tale wedding and her enormous effort to paint a perfect picture in all the magazines, the end of this relationship was especially painful.”
“If you go to any Twelve Step meetings,” said Carolyn, “they tell you not to pull a geographic. A geographic is when people pull up stakes and move rather than face their problems and pains. Move to another house, another city, or another state. Aretha did all three. I was happy to have her move back to Detroit and stay with me and Daddy on LaSalle. It was her home as much as anyone’s. She was paying the mortgage and the utility bills. I liked having my sister help me supervise Daddy’s nurses. But I knew that her move was predicated on her running from her problems in California.”
“I was surprised that Aretha decided to go home to live—and then I wasn’t surprised at all,” said Cecil. “She had been so set on living the Hollywood life. She had high hopes that California was the answer to all her domestic trouble. Like any woman, she just wanted simple happiness. Problem is, Ree is not a simple woman. She’s a genius, and geniuses are plagued by their talent. Their talent takes over their lives and overwhelms everything else. It’s almost as if their talent is too strong to be controlled. I’m not making excuses for my sister, I’m just saying that her genius gave her a sensitivity and vulnerability ordinary people can’t understand. She feels too much. She feels too deeply. She can be hurt too easily. I don’t know if she made too many demands on Glynn or whether Glynn made too many demands on her. I know that they’re both wonderful people with a creative spirit. They both live in the world of competitive backbiting show business. That world is not conducive to long-term romance. And to be frank, I don’t think Ree was built for long-term romantic commitment. Her main commitment is to her music. That’s the one commitment that will never die. Her other unshakable commitment has to do with our dad. She felt like if she could be home by his side, a lot of her anxieties and fears would disappear. After all, of all the people in the world, it was Daddy who had the most calming effect on my sister. She wanted calmness. Aretha has always yearned for calmness. So she came home to find it.”