The Good Reverend Would Have Been Proud

The Good Reverend Would Have Been Proud

Like Vince Aletti said once when referring to one of his favorite groups, this is going to sound like a fan letter. But I can’t help it. When Aretha Franklin is at her best, and let’s face it — that hasn’t happened a whole lot lately, I cannot imagine that anyone could be better. Really. I have only seen Lady Soul twice recently, once last spring in Las Vegas where she returned to the scene of a previous failure, and this past October 25th at Philharmonic Hall in New York City. In Las Vegas she was good, despite seeming insecurity and a shitty band, but there was still a touch of that show-biz stuff. No, she didn’t sing “There’s No Business Like Show Business” — but she did do a medley of Broadway-Streisand type tunes for the beaded and lacquered customers who were taking a respite from the gaming tables.

But forget all that, the woman who stepped out to face an adoring crowd at Philharmonic Hall as the star of the show was perhaps the single embodiment of what music is all about.

Aretha, Erma and Carolyn Franklin have all been reared in the church, and have used these roots quite obviously in the music they record and sing “live”. I was always aware that it was Erma who did “Piece of My Heart” first (mainly because Richard would never stop talking about it), yet I never really listened to Erma or Carolyn’s records alot, nor did I see them perform. But both of them were on hand at Philharmonic Hall to warm up the crowd for Aretha, and both of them would have made their daddy proud.

Erma came out first, all business, and threw herself into funky, hard-driving versions of “Friendship Train,” “My Way” and “Hold On (I’m Coming)”. Wearing a black satin bit-too-tight pajama outfit with a grey feathered hood, she bounced around the stage, and when she sang “Hold On” it ended with a long Tina Turner/Joe Tex rap about how she wasn’t gonna worry about a train going off the track because her man was the conductor and he knew she was on board ...

While we were just barely getting over Erma’s high powered energy, dancers and singers from Olatunji’s Harlem school came out and did some African routines, and then came “Baby Dynamite” — Carolyn Franklin. She braved the really lame band (the very same one Aretha used in Vegas, Donald Towns is the conductor . . . why does she use this band, she certainly deserves better) to do “I Want To Take You Higher”. She got into it a little better with “Goin In Circles”, during which she sang circles around the Friends of Distinction who had the hit, and then “Chain Reaction”. Backed by her three Sounds of Soul, Carolyn was excellent — she really worked.

Perhaps it is because both Erma and Carolyn have headlined on their own at the Apollo Theater and elsewhere, and are such excellent performers in their own right that the level of the evening was so high. Certainly those two alone made an exciting concert. No one could really think of them as “warm up” acts, but since we all knew Aretha was coming, that’s really what they were.

When disc jockey Hal Jackson introduced Aretha everyone jumped up .. . but no, he was a bit too early and when she didn’t show for a minute the band started stumbling along with some Bacharach medley far more suitable to Dionne than Aretha, until she finally appeared . . . and whew! . . . did she look good! Slimmer and more beautiful than ever before, Aretha wore a long sequined, spangly dress, and she glowed.

She dove right into “Respect”, with the band just a little bit behind her and she followed with “Natural Woman”, “Call Me”, (when she purred, “call me, call me” someone in the audience yelled out “what’s your number!” causing Aretha and everyone else to break up laughing).

At one point as she went to sit down at the piano Aretha yelled out, “Man, what a BEAUTIFUL night, I can’t BELIEVE it!”, and then, taking a glass of something to her lips, “This is ice water, believe me!” It seemed almost as if these two remarks summed up all of our feelings — the ecstatic emotion, knowing her voice was taking us all somewhere real special, and then the relief/reminder that she wasn’t gonna fuck up this time!

And she sure didn’t. Any talk of illness, breakdown, whatever, forget it. Aretha was back and oh so unbelievable. As Jerry Wexler sat in the third row looking proud, her1 voice hit notes that I have never heard anyone else get to. She purrs, shouts, croons, moans . . . every single emotion known to woman is contained within the several octaves that she has at her command. I once said that Janis acted out the female drama on stage . . . well, despite the fact that no such comparison is necessary, Aretha does it too, and somehow it hits deeper, in a different way.

Church comes through in everything she does. Especially when Aretha sits at that piano, as she did to accompany herself on “Don’t Play That Song” (after which Hal Jackson presented her with a gold disc for one million sales), and the incredibly funky “Dr. Feelgood”... As she ended up with “Spirit In The Dark” the spirit obviously got to her and she stood up and started dancing across the stage ala Clara Ward type high-stepping ..,. and some folks from the audience ran up to try and do it with her. Some Philharmonic Hall lackey guard attempted to try and stop them, really, as if he could stop that kind of love and excitement going down between Aretha and her people.

The audience insisted that she come back and do some more, and return she did with sisters Carolyn and Erma and one of the Sweet Inspirations (who had backed Aretha all along). Together they sang “Goodnight Sweetheart” and it was really family; one could get a glimpse of what they all must have sounded like in Rev. Franklin’s choir.

It was a totally powerful concert. Some people remarked when it was over that they had never seen Aretha Franklin that good . . . even at the legendary “Soul Together” concert for the Martin Luther King Memorial Fund. I asked Jerry Wexler if he had gotten this one on tape ... he smiled no, but said, “Don’t worry, there’ll be more like this one.” I certainly hope so.

Lisa Robinson