Aretha Franklin (24 page)

As for Wexler's statement that these last two collaborations contained a flash or two of brilliance, there are indeed a couple of songs that start to cook—but the recipe is seriously deficient.
With Everything I Feel in Me
contained one single release, “Without Love,” which only made it to Number Forty-five on the pop chart. The song itself finds Aretha utilizing some of the shrillest notes in her range, amid a performance that sounds as though she is bored. Her version of Burt Bacharach's “Don't Go Breaking My Heart” starts out like an up-tempo ballad, but ends with a weak attempt at replicating the snapping snare sounds of Gloria Gaynor's first disco hit, “Never Can Say Goodbye” (1974). At the end of her remake of Dionne Warwick's hit “You'll Never Get to Heaven,” Aretha does nearly two minutes of scat “la-la-la's” that seem to go on forever. Her rendition of Stevie Wonder's “I Love Every Little Thing About You” is a lackluster attempt to reproduce Stevie's zesty, synthesizer-dominated original. The best numbers on the album include the sassy Carolyn Franklin composition “Sing It Again—Say It Again” and the gospel sound of James Cleveland's “All of These Things.” However, neither of these tunes were up to the high standards she set for herself on
Young, Gifted and Black
.

Regardless of the music on
With Everything I Feel in Me
, the startling cover photo of Aretha caught everyone's attention. She had been wanting to surprise her fans and to project a more youthful image, but this was a real eye-opener: a svelte Aretha provocatively wrapped in a white fur coat— and apparently nothing else. This was in direct contrast to the plump Aretha photographed in a black fur coat that same year for the cover of
Let Me in Your Life
—which resembled a Blackglama fur coat advertisement
from their famed “What Becomes a Legend Most?” campaign. This, however, was the cheesecake shot to end them all, with Aretha showing ample amounts of cleavage, a much thinner face and a shapely thigh.

After two years of wrapping herself in weight-concealing African robes and headgear, Aretha was anxious to change her look. The loose-fitting African clothes that she had been wearing had effectively masked her heaviness, but in 1974 she was ready to shed her “earth mother” image— and forty unwanted pounds. She dropped from 165 to 125 pounds. On a medium-height woman, the loss of forty pounds is quite dramatic—and for a while, Aretha reveled in the change.

At the time, she proclaimed that she was “feeling better now— not just physically, but also about myself—than I have in a long, long time.” She and Ken Cunningham had moved to a six-story brownstone from the high-rise duplex apartment they had been sharing in New York City.

“All the girls will understand the change in attitude and self-appreciation when they hear that I dropped from a size fifteen dress down to a size nine [or] ten, and I can even wear size eight in some things. Any woman knows that kind of thing makes you feel mighty good,” she said. “Actually, I didn't do anything really all that dramatic in order to lose weight. I followed some common sense rules about overeating and I just avoided all those wrong things that everybody knows about, such as cakes, pastries, ice cream, and soda pop. It all started when I went into a dress shop and the saleslady started showing me things in
size fifteen!
With my height—I'm only five foot, five inches—I couldn't stand being that size. Size fourteen was bad enough, but when she said the magic words ‘size fifteen,' I started saying some magic words to myself, and they were, ‘Ohoh, girl. You've gotta start backing up—
way back!
I made up my mind then and there to lose weight, and I did. First thing I did was go to a place in New York where they have a special table with devices that knead you in all the spots where you're bulging and need toning up. They suggested a diet for me, but I confess that I didn't stick to it very long. I read enough diets to know what I was doing wrong, so I sat down and worked out my own weigh-losing plan. I wanted one that I could be comfortable with, and I didn't want to have to take pills—no medicine at all.”

According to her the only substances that she utilized were vinegar and honey. “A lot of people know about the vinegar-and-honey thing,” she explained, “but here's the way I used it. As soon as I got up in the morning, I'd take one teaspoon of honey and two teaspoons of apple-cider vinegar and stir them in about one-third glass of water. I'd drink this before having any breakfast at all. Then I'd have a small glass of orange or grapefruit juice and half a slice of dry toast and sometimes an egg. Later in the day I'd have some clear soup and a small amount of vegetables or fruit. I followed this routine for a week or so, just to clean out my system and prepare it for dieting. When I started eating more solid foods, I'd go to the kitchen and do my ‘corners' thing. That means taking spoons and dipping just the ‘corners' out of pots. I'd have a tablespoon or so of whatever I liked, then I'd go back upstairs, telling myself I'd had a marvelous meal. It didn't take long for my eating habits to change completely. I began losing interest in food and I stopped thinking about eating all the time as I once did.

“I didn't want to lose too much weight too fast, so I paced myself and weighed every day and took off no more than three or four pounds a week. The important thing for me was the vinegar and honey, which kept my stomach feeling okay as my system adapted to the change. I didn't get ill or nervous as some do,” she said. Following her own regimen, she lost the forty pounds in a matter of four and a half months. This was, however, to be a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for Aretha. Any slim and trim photographs of Aretha clearly define this one particular year of her life. The weight would return by the end of the decade.

“Foxy” was an adjective that was used quite freely during the 1970s to describe someone sexy-looking. If 1972–1973 was Aretha's dowdy “African matron” period, then 1974–1975 was surely her “foxy lady” era.

The svelte new figure that she sported during this period encouraged Aretha to take some of her most daring fashion risks. Throughout the seventies, more often than not, Aretha's choices in clothes, on-stage and off, proved misguided. Although she had indeed pulled off with amazing aplomb the cheesecake shot on the cover of
With Everything I Feel in Me
, her fashion whims were, more often than not, total disasters.

Her concert engagements that year showed total inconsistency with her reputation as the Queen of Soul. When she bounded onto the stage
of Harlem's Apollo Theater in a sequined lavender outfit with a lavender top hat, singing “Rock-A-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody,” she really threw her soul fans for a loop. However, she reserved her most ridiculous outfit for Radio City Music Hall in October of 1974. It was here that she came on-stage in a clown costume—complete with a red plastic bulb nose and a silly hat—singing “That's Entertainment.” What
did
she have in mind when she dreamed up these routines?

“I thought it was a nice change of pace,” she explained when the press questioned her choice of material. “As for people accusing me of not being myself—well, who else am I? I am always myself. Maybe the public just doesn't know me?”

She lost further ground when she released her
You
album in November 1975. It was her last album with Jerry Wexler producing, and neither of them will discuss it to this day. There were fewer flashes of brilliance on this album than there were on
With Everything I Feel in Me
. The one highlight was Aretha's composition “Mr. D.J. (5 for the D.J.),” but even that funky cut is substandard. The single release of that song peaked at Number Fifty-three pop, and the album only made it as far as Number Eighty-three on the LP chart. She recorded songs by some of her favorite writers, but not even Van McCoy (“Walk Softly,”) Ronnie Shannon (“You Got All the Aces,”) and her sister Carolyn (“As Long as You Are There”) could help her out of the quicksand she was sinking in this time around.

The cover photo of
You
is embarrassingly sloppy and undignified. Aretha is depicted lounging on a lawn in a bare-midriffed halter top, her sandals off, with a pair of crazy sunglasses on her head. Who on Earth chose this photo?

Billboard
claimed that on
You
, Aretha was “back doing what she does best, raucous yet controlled singing. [She] fits into today's disco mold well on several cuts.” Who were they kidding? If only she was doing good disco music, it would have been better than the material that is on this album. As it was, she was missing the boat on all counts.
Interview
magazine was more on target in 1986 when it described
You
as “a listless album … deserves the cut-out bin.”

After producing
You
with Aretha Franklin, Jerry Wexler left Atlantic Records in 1975, and became a vice-president at Warner Brothers Records.
This ended an incredible era in Aretha's musical life. Together, Wexler and Franklin had created an amazing total of eighteen albums (including the four “greatest hits” packages).

Aretha appeared on several television programs in 1975. In addition to being seen on
The Academy Awards
telecast and
The Grammy Awards
show, she was a guest star on
The Muhammad Ali Special
and a special called
Bob Hope on Campus
. She also taped
The Tonight Show
and the late-night rock & roll series
Midnight Special
. The
Midnight Special
segment was a tribute to Aretha, which presented several film clips and a special performance.

“She was on
Midnight Special
at her thinnest, and she looked great,” recalls Tisha Fein, who was the producer of the special salute to Lady Soul. “It was very difficult to get her to agree to do it, but once she agreed, she was real charming. We opened the segment with a film montage and cut to ‘Respect,' and just wonderful footage of her in church with Reverend James Cleveland, with Mick Jagger in the audience. It was wonderful. She started playing the piano, and she said, “I was never very good on the piano, and see—it's like that again tonight, isn't it?' She did some spirituals and talked about growing up. I asked her some of her favorite moments, and she said, ‘That would have to be at the 20 Grand, working with my sisters. And working with my dad in church. And singing with Ray Charles—he's my hero, an inspiration to me.' She came to the studio in a beautiful pink dress, and taped the show. She was still very shy, but she was real charming.”

Although her latest recordings were failing to find an audience, Aretha retained her star stature. In fact, she gleaned several honors during this period, including an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from BethuneCookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida. Suddenly she had a new title to add to her list: “Dr. Aretha Franklin.” A few nights after receiving her honorary degree, she played a concert date at the Westchester Premier Theater, north of Manhattan. When she came on-stage that night, an enthusiastic fan stood up and shouted, “All right, Miss Ph.D.!”

In 1975, a new female R&B singer literally burst onto the music charts, and ended up cracking the Top Ten with her debut single. She proceeded to rack up six consecutive Gold albums and two Platinum albums from 1975 to 1979. Her style was hot and sassy, and the public
gravitated to her not only for her fresh singing style, but also because her father had been a beloved 1950s singing star. For lack of a better way to describe her vocal style, the press consistently referred to this singer as “the new Aretha Franklin.”

Her name was Natalie Cole, and she appeared on the scene at the exact time that Aretha's record sales were dropping off. At first, Aretha and Natalie developed a warm friendship. In 1976, when the Grammy nominations were announced, it was the first time in eight years that Aretha wasn't up for any awards. When the winners were announced, Natalie was presented with two of the trophies. The night of the presentation, Cole was named “Best New Artist,” and her song “This Will Be” became the first non-Aretha recording to win in the category of “Best R&B Performance, Female.” Backstage at
The Grammy Awards
ceremony, it was clear to Natalie that her friendship with Aretha had ended.

“Aretha Franklin does not like me,” Cole proclaimed after the incident. Explaining her short-lived friendship with Aretha, Natalie said, “I sang at a banquet that was given in Aretha's honor at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, and all we did was shake hands, and she said, ‘I'm hearing a lot about you,' and I said, ‘Really? You're one of my favorite, favorite people.' She sent me flowers when I opened at different places, and then she called me up to wish me ‘Merry Christmas,' and invite me out to lunch sometime the next month.

“I don't know what happened, but someone told her I went around bragging about the fact that she called me, and that she must have been scared of me or something, trying to feel me out. Then I'm calling her, and she wasn't returning my calls, and the next thing was the Grammys. I went up to her and she ‘broke my face.'* I mean, she really hurt me. I said, ‘How come you haven't called or anything?' And she said, ‘How come I haven't called? Huh!'” With that Aretha turned and headed in the opposite direction. Natalie was crushed.

[*Seventies slang for a devastating remark or insult, delivered face-to-face.]

“That night I'd won two Grammys and I was almost in tears,” Natalie recalls. “I felt so bad, I really wished I hadn't won. And that's awful. No one is trying to take anything away from her.”

There is a marked tendency on the part of the press and public to build up a star to the point of superhuman proportions, and then tear him or her down.
Rolling Stone
magazine fanned the flames of the Franklin / Cole feud by reporting: “Reviewers have pointed to Cole's reliance on numerous Franklin trademarks . . . The comparisons are all the more dramatic because Aretha is being characterized in the media as the aging Queen of Soul, in decline … Aretha has not responded well to it. At Atlantic Records, it is said, she was jealous of Roberta Flack's success and the attention she was getting from Atlantic executives. Aretha's morale was kept up only by such token honors as Grammy Awards; she won for “Best Female R&B Vocalist” each year as if she owned the category. And then last year—along came Natalie Cole.”