The Queen of Soul is keeping on
Aretha Franklin talks music, respect, being a natural woman and Anne of Green Gables
The Queen of Soul loves Canada’s Sweetheart.
Alot of fascinating things emerged in a conversation with Aretha Franklin, who’s coming to Roy Thomson Hall on April 25, but the most surprising revelation was her passion for Anne of Green Gables.
“Where’s Prince Edward Island?” the 72-year-old diva suddenly demanded during a recent conversation. After its geographic location was explained, she was asked why she wanted to know.
“I love Anne of Green Gables. I have for years. That’s one of my favourite things. She’s such a can-do kind of girl, that’s why I’m crazy about her. And that Gilbert Blythe? He’s a charmer. And Marilla, a lady who knows just how she wants things to go?” Franklin laughs, deep and rich. “Oh yes, I think I can appreciate that as well. I just think I’d like to see the place they all came from.”
Franklin seems in peak condition, laughing about her swinging 72nd birthday celebration in Manhattan on March 24, when Denzel Washington (currently on Broadway in A Raisin in the Sun) energized the event. “Once he enters a party, let me tell you, the ladies all start shrieking and well they should. He is one attractive man.”
Earlier in the month, Franklin appeared at the White House as part of a celebration of “Women of Soul.” “It was nice to be invited there by President Obama,” she said simply.
All of this is in sharp contrast to recent years. A flurry of cancellations in 2010 started a rumour (since denied by Franklin) that she was suffering from pancreatic cancer.
But when another wave of concerts, including one at Roy Thomson Hall, was postponed last year, the whispering began anew.
“I am absolutely super, you tell people that,” said the feisty Franklin. “Come and hear me sing and you’ll see for yourself. I stay in shape and I’m feeling fine.”
That, by and large, has been Franklin’s mantra throughout a long and productive life, despite a turbulent childhood and a fair share of ups and downs along the way.
Music was part of her journey from the very start, she says. “I remember singing around the house to records that were playing. All kinds of music.
“And the great James Cleveland was often in our house and I grew up with his sound as well,” she says, evoking the minister credited with having shaped the modern gospel sound.
Franklin’s father, C.L. Franklin, was a minister as well who became a major celebrity on the gospel circuit for his dramatic speaking style, christened “the million dollar voice.”
Her mother, Barbara, had a troubled marriage, allegedly due to C.L.’s infidelity, and Franklin lived primarily with her father after the pair separated when she was 6. Barbara died just before her daughter was 10. It’s shortly after that Franklin recalls singing publicly for the first time.
“I was in my dad’s church, his Baptist church, and I think the first song I ever performed was ‘Jesus Be a Fence Around Me.’ ” She sings one of the lyrics softly, “Jesus, I want you to protect me as I travel along the way.”
Within a few years, those travels were wide indeed. Franklin’s father realized the power of her voice and brought her with him to sing when he conducted his highly popular “Gospel Caravans” across the country.
“I had a mother who was not my biological mother” is how Franklin explains who helped her father with parenting. She also toured with groups like the Soul Stirrers but says, “My dad always sent along a chaperone.”
One has to wonder how successful those tactics were because Franklin gave birth to two children out of wedlock before she was 17. She’s never discussed their father but, during that period, she was romantically involved with Sam Cooke, then a member of the Soul Stirrers.
By the time she was 18, she had decided to break into the world of pop music. When asked if it was difficult to leave the world of gospel she had grown up with, she insists, “I never left. The gospel has been a constant with me all of my life. I added onto the world of spiritual music, I never left it behind.”
Joe King became her manager and she credits him “with introducing me to the world of Broadway music.” When reminded of a song from The Unsinkable Molly Brown that she recorded more than 50 years ago, she springs right into the jubilant chorus, “Are you sure that your prayers haven’t been answered?”
“I loved Broadway then and I love it now. I’ve been to Motown and I could surely see it again.”
But when asked if she would welcome a Broadway biography of her like the recent look at Carole King’s life, Beautiful, she expresses some hesitation. “I don’t know if that would work. I don’t know who could play me onstage.”
She’s now safely entrenched in our minds as the Queen of Soul but, interestingly, that part of her career didn’t kick in for a while.
“During my years recording with Columbia, I sang all kinds of songs: Broadway, pop standards, blues and people liked what I was doing, but it wasn’t my real voice and I wasn’t really connecting,” she says of the period that began in 1960.
In 1967, she switched labels to Atlantic and it all changed. Her first single for them was the soulful “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” and it shot to No. 1on the R&B charts and just edged on to the pop charts.
“It was a beginning,” she acknowledges, “and then four months later, along came ‘Respect.’ ”
Otis Redding had written and recorded the song in 1965, but Franklin had her own ideas.
“I thought it was a great song, but I wanted to hear some more things happening, so my sister Carolyn and I took it into the studio.” They added the “R-E-SP-E-C-T” chant that became so memorable and, at the last moment, “we decided to stick in an expression that was big in Detroit at the time, ‘Sock it to me,’ and it just took off.”
The song went to No. 1on both the pop and R&B charts and became Franklin’s theme song. It was also adopted as an anthem by both the civil rights and women’s rights movements.
“I can see why that happened,” she acknowledges.
“We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It’s our basic human right. That’s why people still relate to that song so much.”
Lightning was to strike many times more for Franklin during her career, including another trademark song, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural
“I am absolutely super, you tell people that. Come and hear me sing and you’ll see for yourself.” ARETHA FRANKLIN
Woman.” She explains her affinity for that number.
“I am a natural woman. I do a lot of things naturally. I like doing my own laundry and ironing and cleaning. I am very hands on. No one is going to tell me how to do anything.”
Life hasn’t been perfect for Franklin. Marriages have dissolved, parents have died, close friends like Whitney Houston have died too soon. But she remains stoic.
“Bad things happen with a lot of people. I’m not immune. I just keep keeping on. If you make a promise, you try to keep it.”
Her future plans include new recordings, lots of concerts and, oh yes, “a beach party. I’m having a big beach party this summer.”
Maybe she’ll have it on Prince Edward Island. Anne Shirley, you’re invited, but bring your own ice cream.