By Mark Anthony Neal

In January of 1972, two months short of her 30th birthday, Aretha Franklin walked into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles to record a live gospel album. Backed by the Southern California Community Choir, under the direction of her longtime friend and mentor the Reverend James Cleveland, Franklin’s recording eventually sold over 2 million copies and remained the best-selling Gospel album of all time for more than twenty years. Firmly established as the “Queen of Soul”—and still more than a decade away from the caricature that she has become, Aretha Franklin was at the peak of her artistic powers when she recorded Amazing Grace. More than 35 years after its release, the album stands as the best testament of Franklin’s singular genius.

Having earned six Grammy Awards, nearly a dozen gold singles and several gold albums, Franklin was easily the most commercially successful black woman vocalist ever. Culled from sessions recorded in late 1970 and throughout 1971, her album Young, Gifted and Black marks the beginning of what might be called her most sustained period of artistic genius.

Franklin’s decision to record tracks like Elton John’s “Border Song,” Jerry Butler’s “Brand New Me,” Lennon and McCartney’s “The Long and Winding Road” and Nina Simone’s “Young, Gifted and Black,” alongside originals like “Day Dreamin’,” “All the King’s Horses” and the infectious “Rock Steady” was as much about an artist who had warranted the right to record anything she wanted, as it was about a woman who felt she finally had control over her life and career.

Aretha rips a live version of “Rock Steady” on the Flip Wilson show.

Franklin is adamant in her memoirs that Amazing Grace didn’t mark a return to church, in a spiritual sense: “When I say ‘took me back to church,’ I mean recording in church. I never left church. And I never will.” (p.150) Franklin’s very first recording, “Never Grow Old,” was done in her father’s church in 1956. Her first album, Songs of Faith, contained recordings of live performances while she was on tour with her father. In the years between that release and Amazing Grace, Franklin had, with others, been largely responsible for mainstreaming the black Gospel aesthetic in popular music and culture.

Though Franklin had long desired to make a fully-fledged live Gospel recording, the immediate impetus for Amazing Grace might have been one of Franklin’s most triumphant performances—her three-night stand with King Curtis at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West in March of 1971. The engagement resulted in the recording Live at the Fillmore West (recently re-issued as Don’t Fight the Feeling: Live at the Fillmore West). Introducing Franklin and her music to one of the iconic sites of late 1960s and early 1970s counter-culture seemed like a risky endeavor at the time. As writer Mark Bego describes the venue in his book Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul, “There were no chairs and bleachers…the audience sat cross-legged on the floor, or stood up and grooved to the music being performed on stage. People in the audience freely passed around joints during the shows.” (p.137)

It was Jerry Wexler, Franklin’s longtime producer, who was largely behind the Fillmore West engagement, resisting the natural inclination for the public and critics to simply see Franklin as a Soul singer. Wexler is quoted in Bego’s book “we want these longhairs to listen to this lady. After that they’ll be no problems.” Franklin still had to deliver, and she did, tackling material like Stephen Stills’ “Love the One You’re With” and Bread’s “Make It With You” for the first time. By the time Franklin dips deep into the well of black spirituality, with the assistance of Ray Charles, on a nearly 30-minute rendition of “Spirit in the Dark” on the last night of her engagement, it was clear that the largely hippie crowd had themselves been sanctified. With Amazing Grace, Franklin would capture that same energy, in what was nothing short of an old-fashioned revival.

1984 Aretha sings “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” in memory of her father, Rev. C.L. Franklin

“Aretha Franklin returns home,” is how one critic described Amazing Grace, and indeed much of the preparation for the two nights of performances at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church was intended to make Franklin feel at home. In the mix were members of her regular studio band including guitarist Cornel Dupree, bassist Chuck Rainey, and drummer Bernard Purdie. In addition her father, Reverend C.L. Franklin, who provided remarks on the second night, and gospel singer Clara Ward were in attendance for the recording. As Franklin admits in From These Roots, “Along with my dad, Miss Ward was my greatest influence. She was the ultimate gospel singer—dramatic, daring, exciting, courageous…She took gospel where gospel had never gone before.” (p.153)

If Amazing Grace was a homecoming, it was because the recording recalled Aretha’s home life two decades earlier, when James Cleveland, a young ambitious and talented musician and choir director, was living in the Franklin household. Of Cleveland, Franklin would later write, “James helped shape my basic musical personality in profound ways…I was blessed to meet James so early in his career.” (p.41) By the time that Cleveland joined Franklin for the Amazing Grace sessions, he had long been established as one of the leading gospel stars of his generation, most well known for his composition “Peace Be Still” and his stunning arrangements for choirs. Cleveland was himself at the peak of his powers in 1972. Franklin’s longtime producer Jerry Wexler realized as much and recalls that the “arrangements were between [Franklin] and James Cleveland. Those arrangements, some of them were traditional—and some of them were things that she and James Cleveland put together.”

Franklin’s involvement in the production of Amazing Grace was no small matter. As she rather pointedly expresses in her memoir, “As much as I appreciated the soulful studio environment in which Atlantic placed me and the sensitive musicians who played by my side, one point was deceptive and unfair: I was not listed as a co-producer.” Franklin later told Gerri Hirshey in Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music (1984), “I always worked on my sound, my arrangements, before I went into a studio with a producer.” Hirshey confirms this point: “there’s no better evidence than Aretha’s own notes from those fabled sessions. They are written in a girlish, slanted hand on yellow legal pads. They actually look like homework, as Aretha claims they were.”(243) It was to Wexler’s credit that he understood from the beginning of his work with Franklin in 1967, that she had the best idea about how she should sound. Franklin’s piano playing on many of her Atlantic recordings to that point was a testament to that understanding. Franklin’s point was that she needed to get formal recognition for her co-producer status. Amazing Grace is the first Franklin recording in which she is listed as a co-producer.

Part 2: The Amazing Grace Sessions

Aretha At the Keys: Queen of Soul plays a mean piano on “Don’t Play That Song For Me”

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke University. His blog is called New Black Man.

Fillmore West . Gill Graham . Jerry Butler . Jerry Wexler . Nina Simone . Ray Charles . Rev. James Cleveland Artist Profiles . Features