Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin: Hey Now Hey (Atlantic)

Review by Bob Fisher, Cream, September 1973

IT'S BEEN HIP for mainstream rock critics to knock Miss Franklin for some time now, in much the same way the current vogue is to ...

Aretha Franklin

Essay by Amy Linden, Source, The, 1998

THE SUBJECT is female singers, and we’re gonna make it easy on ya. ...

A History Of Soul Queen Aretha Franklin

Profile by Derek Boltwood, Record Mirror, December 1967

WELL, WHAT'S going to happen in 1968? New faces? New stars? Of course. But as we step gingerly over the threshold into the new year, ...

Aretha Franklin: Lady Soul in London

Live Review by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, May 1968

FRIDAY, MAY 10th, marked the long overdue arrival in Britain of America's first Lady of Soul, the remarkable Miss Aretha Franklin: an event which soul ...

Aretha Franklin: Aretha's Artistry

Profile by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, May 1968

THE YOUNG lady who has probably had more effect on the r&b scene in the U.S.A. than anyone else during the past year, who has ...

Aretha Franklin: Lady Soul

Interview by Norman Jopling, Record Mirror, May 1968

SOME PEOPLE are going around saying that Aretha Franklin is the Queen Of Soul, many people are buying her records, and one person (show compère ...

Aretha Franklin: Hammersmith Odeon, London

Live Review by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, August 1970

WHEN THE second house of Aretha's only London date started half an hour late, it did at first appear a bad sign. However, since the ...

Aretha Franklin: Our Queen

Report and Interview by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, August 1970

THE ARRIVAL in Britain of the Queen of Soul was, naturally, a Red Letter day in the 1970 Soul calendar. After all, this was only ...

Jerry Wexler: Aretha, She's Just Unbelievable

Interview by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, January 1971

JERRY WEXLER is without doubt, one of the great producers who revolutionised Rhythm and Blues music in the 50's and 60's. ...

Aretha Franklin: Aretha's Thank You To B&S Readers

Interview by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, May 1971

ANOTHER VISIT PLANNED FOR THE END OF THE YEAR ...

Aretha Franklin at Fillmore West

Live Review by Jonh Ingham, Creem, June 1971

BILL GRAHAM'S Fillmore West. At one end is a fairly large stage, the sides littered with sound equipment. Behind it hangs the light show scrim. ...

Aretha Franklin: Greatest Hits – on Atlantic and Columbia

Review by Pete Wingfield, Cream, December 1971

ON ATLANTIC: Greatest Hits illustrates the power that fourteen condensed, concise, definitive musical statements can exert – particularly in the soul/R&B field, totally geared until ...

Aretha Franklin (with James Cleveland and the South California Community Choir): Amazing Grace (Atlantic)

Review by Ian MacDonald, NME, August 1972

Aretha at her greatest ...

Aretha Franklin: Amazing Grace (Atlantic)

Review by Roger St. Pierre, NME, August 1972

THOUGH IT HAS received wide critical accalim Aretha Franklin's latest album, the double set Amazing Grace, is far and away the least commercially orientated she ...

Aretha Franklin: Amazing Grace (Atlantic)

Review by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, September 1972

WHEN I WAS first privileged to hear some of Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace album when John Abbey brought back from the States several cassettes'-worth of ...

Rev James Cleveland

Profile and Interview by John Abbey, Blues & Soul, December 1972

IT'S REALLY quite a sad commentary on life that it took a pupil to bring the master to the attention of the world but that's ...

Aretha: Supersoulstar

Interview by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, December 1973

2008 introduction: Aretha Franklin had just enjoyed major success with the Stevie Wonder composition 'Until You Come Back To Me'. She was in contract re-negotiations ...

A Spirit in the Dark: Aretha Franklin at Fillmore West, 1971

Book Excerpt by Michael Lydon, Boogie Lightning, 1974

IT WAS A NIGHT of nights. Tower of Power set the mood: 'You Got To Funkify', and then King Curtis and his Kingpins and the ...

Aretha Franklin: With Everything I Feel In Me (Atlantic)

Review by Barbara Charone, Sounds, 1974

IT'S A sorry state of affairs when you put a new Aretha Franklin album on the turntable and it blends into the woodwork with the ...

Aretha Franklin: With Everything I Feel In Me (Atlantic)

Review by Loraine Alterman, New York Times, November 1974

Aretha, You're the Top ...

Aretha Franklin: Sparkle (Atlantic)****

Review by Vivien Goldman, Sounds, October 1976

SUBTITLED 'Music From The Motion Picture', Sparkle is a soundtrack album, that plays like a record. It doesn't, unlike most of the genre, hang limply ...

Curtis Mayfield: The Creative Mastermind

Interview by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, December 1976

TO TRY and describe Curtis Mayfield's enormous contribution to the music world would take far more adjectives than we have at our disposal. ...

Aretha Franklin: Sweet Passion

Review by Paul Rambali, NME, June 1977

WHAT to do with Aretha Franklin? The question must echo around Atlantic's New York offices whenever it's time for her to make another record. ...

Aretha Franklin: Aretha Still Rules Okay

Interview by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, July 1977

A rare and exclusive interview with David Nathan. Aretha tells B&S about her new album, her movie and tour plans, and life on the West ...

Aretha Franklin: Queen Aretha #1 – From Detroit to The Columbia Years

Retrospective by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, August 1977

An appreciation of the career of Aretha Franklin ...

Aretha Franklin: Queen Aretha #2 – The Golden Years

Retrospective by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, August 1977

"THERE WAS a great zest, love and feeling for the music," states Jerry Wexler and when pressed further on the subject of that first session ...

Aretha Franklin: Queen Aretha #3 – Into the '70s

Retrospective by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, August 1977

1969 IS GENERALLY acclaimed as the year that saw something of a decline on Aretha's part. The decline was, in a sense, inevitable. The ridiculous ...

Aretha Franklin: Queen Aretha #4 – The Brand New Aretha

Retrospective by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, September 1977

Part 4 of an appreciation of the career of Aretha Franklin, by David Nathan... ...

Aretha Franklin: Queen Aretha #5 – The Future

Comment by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, September 1977

David Nathan concludes his in-depth appreciation of Aretha Franklin ...

Aretha Franklin: Almighty Fire

Review by Joe McEwen, Rolling Stone, June 1978

THERE'S A SONG on Almighty Fire that has little to do with the rest of this Curtis Mayfield-produced album. 'I'm Your Speed' ends side two ...

Aretha Franklin

Interview by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, September 1978

In one of the very rare interviews she grants, Lady Soul gave this in-depth story to B&S' David Nathan at her beautiful Encino, California home. ...

Aretha Franklin: At the Victoria Apollo

Live Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds, November 1980

PREJUDICES ON THE TABLE: I think Aretha Franklin has the most stirring, moving voice I've every heard, but I'm much less sure about the use ...

Women Soul Singers

Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1990

FOR ALL THE LEGENDARY kings of soul music, the Sam Cookes and Otis Reddings and Marvin Gayes, the true spirit of this great black American ...

Dan Penn

Interview by John Pidgeon, Record Hunter, March 1991

DAN PENN WROTE his first hit ('Is A Bluebird Blue?' for Conway Twitty) at fourteen, and collaborated prolifically with Spooner Oldham, turning out mid '60s ...

Aretha Franklin: The Columbia Years

Discography by David Nathan, Goldmine, July 1994

IN AN EFFORT to glorify the outstanding work that she did at Atlantic Records (1967-1979), musicologists and music industry pundits frequently refer to Aretha Franklin's ...

Aretha Franklin: Return Of Soul Sister Number One

Comment by Carol Cooper, Pulse!, June 1996

ARETHA – a name so singularly musical that it rolls off the tongue like an incantation. Almost four decades after 1967’s ‘I Never Loved ...

Time Machine: Aretha Franklin

Retrospective by Johnny Black, MOJO, May 1997

The most crucial moment in Aretha Franklin's career ...

Aretha Franklin: Rockport Rhythm & Blues Festival, Newport, Rhode Island

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, July 1997

"Summertime, and the living is easy..." So ring out the words of Aretha Franklin’s backing singers as they warm up the crowd for the entrance ...

How to Buy Aretha Franklin

Discography by Fred Dellar, MOJO, July 1997

DURING 1956, a 14-year-old Aretha, daughter of gospel superstar the Reverend C.L. Franklin, sang and played piano before an enthusiastic congregation at her father's new ...

Aretha Franklin: Queen Aretha Holds Court

Report and Interview by Jeff Apter, nyrock.com, March 1998

THERE ARE few performers for whom one name is sufficient (and no, this list does not include Yanni). Think Bruce, Garth, Iggy, Janis. And, of ...

Arif Mardin: A Man For All Musical Seasons

Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, July 1998

READING THROUGH the list of artists that producer/arranger Arif Mardin has worked with is like looking at a chapter of history from American pop music. ...

Rock 100: Aretha Franklin

Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Cooper Square Books (reissue), 1999

IN 1972 WHEN ARETHA FRANKLIN RECORDED Amazing Grace, her first gospel album in 14 years, at the New Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago, it was ...

Jerry Wexler: Aretha And Me

Interview by Tom Cox, Guardian, The, August 1999

JERRY WEXLER, co-founder of Atlantic Records and in-house producer, was picking himself up off the floor of Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama when he received ...

The Queen's Greatest Tracks

Review by Martin Colyer, Barney Hoskyns, Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, May 2002

"THEY USED to call me a jazz singer," Aretha told Val Wilmer in 1968. "Now I think what I sing is closer to R&B and ...

Remembering Jerry Wexler…

Comment by David Nathan, Stax 50th Online Blog, September 2008

I'M NOT sure the first time I saw Gerald Wexler's name on an album. ...

Some Things Are Sacred: A Jubilant Appreciation of The Music Of Aretha Franklin

Overview by David Nathan, SoulMusic.com, December 2008

YOU JUST have to know that some things are sacred. ...

Blue-Singing Gospel Girls: Aretha and her Forebears

Book Excerpt by Anthony Heilbut, 'The Fan Who Knew Too Much' (Knopf), June 2012

AMONG THE SEVERAL MYTHS Aretha's father Reverend C. L. Franklin incarnated was a familiar type, Reverend Eatemup, the man with pastoral appetites in food ...