Aretha Franklin

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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 confess ...

Aretha Franklin
Essay by Amy Linden, The Source, 1998
THE SUBJECT is female singers, and we’re gonna make it easy on ...

ARTICLES IN LIBRARY

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 always ...

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 fans ...

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 opening ...

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 Aretha's ...

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 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. In ...

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 very ...

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 has ...

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 the ...

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 almost ...

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 with ...

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 same ...

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 Memphis ...

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 like ...

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 ...

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 on ...

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 pressures ...

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 and ...

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. Hopefully, ...

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 she's ...

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 art ...

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 R&B ...

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 a ...

Time Machine: Aretha Franklin
Retrospective by Johnny Black, Mojo, May 1997
The most crucial moment in Aretha Franklin's career ...

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 Bethel's ...

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 of ...

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 course, ...

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. Consider ...

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 significant ...

Jerry Wexler: Aretha And Me
Interview by Tom Cox, The Guardian, 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 ...

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 straight ...

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. ...