![]() The likes of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Della Reese, and Nat King Cole jammed at the Franklins’ house, as well as future Motown stars Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross and gospel legends like Mahalia Jackson and the Reverend James Cleveland, who taught Aretha her first piano chords. In 1946 her father, the Reverend Clarence LaVaughn “C.L.” Franklin, moved the Franklins from Memphis to Detroit to lead New Bethel Baptist, where he became a figure of considerable spiritual, social, and cultural renown. Her home environment nurtured those gifts and acknowledged their significance. Even as a child, whether singing or playing the piano by ear, her technical skills and stylistic instincts were so perfect as to seem uncanny. She had it as a child and has never lost it, not for a second.”Īretha’s talents were apparent early on, and she needed no tutelage. She transformed her extreme pain to extreme beauty. It took her a minute to get it together, but when she did it, it all came pouring out. We all knew she had a beautiful voice, but we also knew she had been an emotional mess all week. “ stood behind the piano and looked out…there might have been a couple of thousand people in attendance that day - and paused before starting. She was 10 and her mother had suddenly passed away, four years after leaving her father, Aretha, and her siblings Cecil, Erma, and Carolyn: In one particularly affecting moment in Respect, Ritz’ second biography of Aretha, he quotes her older sister Erma recalling Aretha’s first solo in their father’s church. Like no one else, Aretha had the voice and ability to express herself in a way that absolutely crystallizes how it feels to be powerful and powerless at the same time. Like my other favorite American Walt Whitman, she contradicts herself, she is large, she contains multitudes. For her, making music always seemed to be a way to remember and to forget to center herself and to distract from herself to take control and to surrender. ![]() This album also features the "Wedding Song" which was written for Hazel and Jermaine Jackson's wedding and the "Happy" theme from the movie Lady Sings the Blues.That last sentence is particularly important to understanding Aretha. ![]() Before long, it caught on around the country and evolved into a new market. Briefly, radio mogul Cathy Hughes, owner of Radio One, was the general manager at Howard University radio WHUR during the early '70s when she created the format "the quiet storm." She used Smokey Robinson's composition as the theme song. The lyric of the ballad "The Agony and the Ecstasy" hit the Top Ten at number seven, and it was followed by the masterpiece "A Quiet Storm." Although it only managed to seal the Top 25, it has since made a greater impact on the music charts and music industry. It was Robinson's first number one single since leaving the Miracles. Arranged in an intermittent rhythm, "Baby That's Backatcha" ran up the Billboard R&B charts to number one inside 16 weeks. The album itself had three singles hit the charts. ![]() The title track became the namesake for a music format. As many of his prior songs had shaped R&B and pop music, this album would have a similar effect. The genius of William "Smokey" Robinson is immeasurable.
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