Aretha Franklin, Today I Sing The Blues, 1969

Columbia Stereo LP, 1969

1 Walk On By
2 One Room Paradise
3 Take a Look
4 Evil Gal Blues
5 Every Little Bit Hurts
6 Won't Be Long
7 Without the One You Love
8 Trouble In Mind
9 Rough Lover
10 Today I Sing The Blues

Aretha Franklin, voc
Original production 1960-1966 by John Hammond, Clyde Otis and Robert Mersey

New music production (August 1969):
Jerome Richardson, ts
Joe Newman, tp
Seldon Powell, Frank wess, ts
Babe Clark, baritone sax
Benny Powell, tb
Bernard Purdie, Jimmy Johnson, ds
Chuck Rainey, bs
James Booker, Paul Griffith, piano
Richard Tee, organ
Valerie Simpson, Hilda Harris, Melba Moore, bg voc
(guitarists not identified)
New sessions produced by Billy Jackson
arranged and conducted by Billy Jackson and Ellen Starr

STOP RIGHT THERE. You think you know this record but you don't. You think this is some lame greatest hits compilation of weird unknown Aretha Franklin songs you can't really place. But that's only a little bit true.

Aretha Franklin, arguably the greatest soul singer who has ever lived, is indeed a preacher's daughter who learned to sing in church and came to be an evolving icon of soul and r&b music in at least three decades. R-e-s-p-e-c-t, right?

Well here's the thing. The minute record companies found Ms. Franklin they began trying to figure out how to count all the money she could make for them. Aretha's career has been about her incredible voice, her piano playing, her way around the lyrics of a song, her way with a groove. But it has also been all about the production; the men who pushed her career along inventing her, taking her to recognition and success and then reinventing her many times. Jerry Wexler did it for Atlantic in the 1960s. Quincy Jones and Curtis Mayfield did it for Atlantic in the 1970s. Clive Davis did it for Arista in the 1980s.

But before these guys, John Hammond, bluesman Clyde Otis (Shuggie's dad) and schlock-meister Bob Mersey all tried to do it for Columbia in the early 1960s, and failed. Before there was RESPECT, before anybody was socking it to anybody, they tried to make Aretha into a second Dinah Washington. They tried blues. They tried jazz. They tried sugar-coated string-and-background-voices versions of pop standards. She sang beautifully: some of the music of her Columbia period is haunting. Her versions of "God Bless the Child," "Skylark", "Try a Little Tenderness," "This Bitter Earth," and "Take a Look" will make you weep. But they didn't make Aretha famous cause they just didn't find the SOUL.

So the sixties go by and Atlantic is rolling in the dough that Aretha is making for them and she is the QUEEN of soul. Oh snap, geniuses at Columbia Records! Aretha is a big star and not for you! So these guys look at their mountains of tape and get an idea. From the original liner notes to this album now before you: "WOW! Has Aretha got a super session to back her fantastic material on this album--it will absolutely flip you, especially if you get into the subtleties of what's happening musically as well as with Aretha. I mean a whole new group of people got behind what went down..." What they're cagily saying is that they have wiped Aretha's original backing tracks off ten songs recorded at least five years before and re-recorded new instrumental backings to update her sound for 1969 and make themselves lots of money.

Do you SEE who they got to do this? Valerie Simpson and Melba Moore singing backup? A serious soul-jazz rhythm section, and some serious brass royalty? Nobody got credited for crap on those original Columbia sessions, so who knows who got erased. Did it work? Did legions of record buyers looking to buy Aretha's latest soulful slice of wax get confused and pick this one up instead? Well, no. By all accounts everybody associated with this album was deeply embarrassed by it, Aretha Franklin included. But you know what? Forty years later this sh*t is hot. The production turned silver into gold. I don't know about you but I'm not so impressed with the latest crop of American Idol caterwaulers that I'm gonna go listen to that and throw this slice of Aretha plus VALERIE SIMPSON, CHUCK RAINEY, BERNARD PRETTY PURDIE, and RICHARD TEE and some super funky unnamed guitarist into the trash because it was somebody's questionable attempt to make a buck.

I first heard of this album when one of these re-recorded tracks snuck into a Columbia-era greatest hits compilation first on LP and then on CD. The original version of the title song is fine, in a straight early-sixties blues way. But the re-recorded song has soul! (See comments for a comparison download of three versions of the title song to see exactly what's happening here). Now listen to the opener: that is a GREAT version of "Walk On By."

So here's the truth: This relic of record company manipulation is a great lost soul record! It might be a cynical attempt to cash in on Aretha's career when her earnings were not going to Columbia, but it's a really nice record. I spent years trying to find this and, thanks to a sealed LP (original price sticker: $1.97) scored on eBay, I'm now sharing this with you. Reviled by everybody--unjustly now, in retrospect--it has never been on CD and I don't imagine it ever will be.

Enjoy. And please let me know what you think.

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Ps check out the Aretha Franklin discography at Blaxploitation Jive.