Aretha At Her Peak, part 2
By Mark Anthony Neal
During those two nights in January of 1972, the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles was the site of something truly amazing. The song list from the first night of the live recording session for Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace album reveals the eclecticism that would become the hallmark of Franklin’s recordings in this era. Pop standards like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the 1945 musical Carousel (which was an early hit for Patti Labelle and the Bluebelles), were chosen alongside traditional gospel fare like “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and “Precious Memories” (popularized by Sister Rosetta Thorpe), original tunes like Clara Ward’s “How I Got Over” and even Marvin Gaye’s “Wholy Holy,” which Franklin opens with.
Franklin’s eclecticism was a product of the multiple worlds her success forced her to bridge. Nowhere was this more apparent than her medley of “Precious Lord, Take My Hand/You’ve Got a Friend” which combines the most well known compositions of the “Father of Gospel,” Thomas A. Dorsey (in whose Chicago church Cleveland got his start) and singer-songwriter Carole King, whose “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” was one of Franklin’s signature recordings.
The brilliance of Franklin’s seamless performance of these songs is not simply an acknowledgement of great songs from the American Songbook, but the realization of Franklin’s own cultural gravitas which had the impact of elevating Dorsey—largely unknown to Franklin’s mainstream fans—to the level of King, who at the time had been acknowledged as the quintessential singer-songwriter of her generation.
The secular singer: Aretha on stage, and working out “Ain’t No Way” in the studio circa 1971.
What ultimately makes Amazing Grace such a powerful index of Aretha Franklin’s talent is the response of the audience—traditional church goers among fans, critics, gospel royalty, and the curious. Cleveland makes note of the atypical crowd in his opening remarks, telling the audience “I’d like for you to be mindful though, that this is a church, and we’re here for religious service… we want you to give vent to the spirit. Those of you not hip to giving vent to the spirit, then you do the next best thing.” By the time Aretha segues into “How I Got Over” after her stirring duet with Cleveland on “Precious Memories,” it is clear that the crowd has caught the spirit; “How I Got Over” elicits a false start as Cleveland tells folk, “you know y’all threw us off just then, don’t clap ’till we get it open.”
The crowd was ripe when Franklin delivered what might be the definitive performance of her career. “Amazing Grace” is the most traditional of all traditional hymns—there has not been a Gospel singer (or Country or Blues singer for that matter) worth their salt who hasn’t spent some time putting their unique spin on the song. For all of those suspicious of Franklin’s seemingly sudden desire to come “back home” to the Church, this was the performance that would put all concerns to rest. Clocking in at over 16 minutes, including Cleveland’s touching introduction, “Amazing Grace” features Franklin unadorned save for the backing of organist Ken Lupper and Cleveland on piano. Critic David Nathan perhaps says it best describing the “emotional nakedness” of Franklin’s performance. Her singing had the feel of a testimony or even a spiritual purging, and the crowd was in-step with Franklin through every turn of phrase and melismic flourish. Hirshey recalls that Cleveland “stayed at the piano until he broke down in tears” during the performance. “Amazing Grace” would be Franklin’s closing number on the opening night and there was little reason to believe that she would match the emotional level of that performance.
Aretha Franklin sings “Amazing Grace” at Luther Vandross’ funeral in NYC, July 2005.
The second night of performances opened with “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and Gaye’s “Wholy Holy”—two of the four songs performed on both nights. Perhaps anticipating a letdown from the first night’s closing performance, Cleveland admonished the crowd before the opening hymn, “you only get out of it what you put in.” But Cleveland’s warning wasn’t necessary. After a rather perfunctory performance of the opening tracks, Franklin began a sequence of five songs that is as impressive as any suite of music recorded within the idiom of African-American music.
Franklin’s old friend Rev. James Cleveland oversaw the Amazing Grace recording sessions.
Beginning with a rousing rendition of the hymn “Climbing Higher Mountains,” Cleveland slows the tempo with an improvised Blues riff on the song (doing call and response opposite Franklin), that serves as an introduction to the hymn “God Will Take Care of You.” The significant action in the song occurs nearly two-thirds in when Cleveland again ascends to the mic, urging the crowd to a higher level. “Over in the sanctified church, when they begin to feel like this” Cleveland exhorts “All the saints get together and they join in a little praise. I wonder can I get you to help me say it one time?” The crowd yells “yeah” several times in unison before the musicians unleash a torrent of sanctified rhythm. This section of the performance can be best described as the “pedagogy of Black Gospel” as Cleveland literally provides instruction for “catching the spirit” at the same time making transparent certain intimate details of African-American community. The sheer brilliance of the moment is that Cleveland was essentially using the segment as a musical transition from a spiritual ballad to a down-home stomper—you can hear him at the piano cueing the musicians and the choir for the cold start of the next song, “Old Landmark”—highlighting the genius that is often born of utility.
The crowd is spent when the pace shifts again for Franklin’s stellar version of The Caravans’ classic, “Mary Don’t You Weep”—and Franklin begins her own version of Gospel pedagogy. At the time of the recording, The Caravans were largely known as Gospel’s first super-group, counting the legendary Albertina Walker, Dorothy Norwood, Inez Andrews and Shirley Caesar among its ranks at one time or another. Cleveland was an accompanist for the group in the mid-1950s. The Caravans were to Gospel in the 1950s and 1960s, what Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers were to Jazz; a high-end finishing school for the genre’s elite. Given this legacy, it was only fitting that Franklin would perform one of the group’s best known songs.
The song, originally recorded by the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1915, tells the story of Lazarus of Bethany—a figure who, in Biblical lore, is brought back from death by Jesus. Ostensibly a song about the power of Jesus to deliver believers from adverse conditions, Franklin’s performance functioned, in part, as an extended moment of collective mourning in the aftermath of the murder of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (a close confidante of Franklin’s father, Rev. C.L. Franklin) and others such as Fred Hampton, Bunchy Carter, students at Jackson State, and countless others who sacrificed their lives in support of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. Franklin and Cleveland’s arrangements transform “Mary Don’t You Weep” into a dirge, but one that—in the spirit of much of the best of black expressive culture—builds on cathartic possibilities.
Rev. & Mrs. C.L. Franklin circa 1945; Rev. Franklin with Dr. Martin Luther King in 1963.
At face value, Franklin’s “Mary Don’t You Weep” is a powerful example of Gospel music’s capacity to perform exegesis, but I’d like to suggest something much more. In Franklin’s hands, “Mary Don’t You Weep” resurrects the very idea of progressive community—a concept of community that was literally under siege when Franklin made her recording. Less an attempt at resurrecting a mythical “savior,” Franklin’s performance was an attempt to recover a beloved community—a community that, as constituted in the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church during those two nights in January of 1972, foretold the kind of imagined community that would have the capacity to elect a Black President more than three decades after Franklin’s performance.
Franklin ends the suite with a 15-minute version of “Never Grow Old”—a song she first recorded as teen—seemingly putting an exclamation point on the inexhaustible idea of beloved community. “I have heard of a land on the far away strand,” she sings, “’Tis a beautiful home of the soul.” By the time Franklin and Cleveland concluded the evening with a second rendition of “Precious Memories,” after impromptu comments from Reverend C.L. Franklin, it was evident to many in the audience, that they had been witness to something that was genuinely transcendent.
Franklin sings “My Country Tis Of Thee” at President Obama’s inauguration, 2009.
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.
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