Aretha said it came from her, while her producer, the legendary Jerry Wexler, has taken credit for himself. There’s a long-standing dispute over whose idea it was to make the live album that became Amazing Grace. All that’s to say, while Aretha was more than happy with the success she enjoyed with Atlantic Records, making genre-defining albums like I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You, Lady Soul and Aretha Now in the 1960s, she never forgot where she came from. Her very first album, 1956's Songs Of Faith, was a live recording of beloved gospel favorites made in her father’s New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit when she was just a young teenager.
Long before she demanded “Respect” on the secular charts, she toured the country as a teenager, singing Gospel music in churches with her father on a sort of religious caravan.
Franklin was a highly-renowned pastor in Detroit, and her music career began in the church. But for all the historic moments that she helped soundtrack and elevate over the span of decades, it was the pair of concerts delivered New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles in 1972 that rank as her finest hours.Īretha Franklin was a woman of God. in 1968, subbing in for Luciano Pavarotti with 30 minutes notice on “Nessun Dorma” at the 1998 Grammys, or bringing new meaning to “My Country, 'Tis of Thee” at the inauguration of the first black President Barack Obama in 2009, she always, always rose to the occasion. Whether that meant singing “Precious Lord” at the funeral for the assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. There was no stage in the world too small, and no moment in history too large that the Queen of Soul wasn’t prepared to meet head on with all the titanic force and touching elegance that was afforded to her by years of toil and a voice like no other. Aretha Franklin’s incredible life was defined by an amazing collection of iconic performances.
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