Aretha Franklin (31 page)

According to Barrow, there were few performers in 1982 who were popular enough to draw a sell-out crowd—when the tickets were a thousand dollars apiece. Aretha Franklin, however, was. “We really went through a lag there, where there were very few single artists that could carry off a thousand-dollar ticket. Today we have Cher, we have Madonna, in addition to Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler, that could do it. But they weren't doing concerts for other people at that time, so this was really a one-time thing.

“Lesley Ann Warren acted as the emcee, and the two special guests were Ben Vereen and Marvin Hamlisch. They were the opening act, and
then Aretha Franklin did her thing after that. There was an intermission, then she performed for an hour. I think she was really quite honored to be there, and she put on a hell of a show. With those other three people [on the bill], she really could have walked out and done twenty minutes. I think everybody was quite surprised that she performed that long, and that she belted it out—she wasn't holding back. She gave a 102-percent!” exclaimed Barrow.

The Joffrey Ballet has honored Aretha by presenting a ballet that was choreographed using her music. “There is a ballet in our repertoire called ‘Love Songs,' and it's a ballet to recordings by Aretha and Dionne Warwick,” explains Marlyn Baum, publicist for the Joffrey. “William Forsythe, who was trained at the Joffrey Ballet School, is now the Artistic Director of the Frankfurt Ballet, and he is the choreographer of ‘Love Songs.' The ballet ‘Love Songs' is in the repertory of the Frankfurt Ballet, and it's also in our repertory.” It debuted in Munich in 1979.

Franklin's recordings of “If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody,” “You're All I Need of Get By,” and “Baby, I Love You” were used in the American version of the ballet. In addition to having been performed live, “Love Songs” has also been filmed as part of the PBS-TV series
Dance in America
. In Germany, “Love Songs” has not only been performed in Munich and Frankfurt, but the Stuttgart Ballet also mounted a production of it. In Stuttgart an additional Aretha classic song was added as its finale—“(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”

Aretha was so pleased with the outcome of the Joffrey Ballet benefit that she decided to organize her own annual charity event. The original concept was to host a dinner show every year, in a different city, to raise money for worthy causes. She solidified her plans for the first event, and began lining up musical guests. She called her project “The Artis't Ball.” The first was held on September 14, 1982, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, starring herself, the Four Tops, and Lulu. The evening's proceeds were split between the Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation and the Arthritis Foundation. According to insiders, the event failed to raise a substantial amount of money for either of the charities, because it was completely disorganized.

In defense of Aretha, this fiasco has to be viewed within the context of what was happening in her personal life. In addition to the financial
and emotional pressures of her father's illness, and her growing boredom with the Hollywood lifestyle, her storybook marriage suddenly and mysteriously ended. Something happened between her and Glynn that was so traumatic that it left no chance of reconciliation.

The most widely circulated rumor stated that Aretha—allegedly—discovered Glynn having an affair with someone who was quite close to her, and that it instantly marked the end of their relationship. A neighbor, who lived down the street from the couple, commented that she was surprised the marriage had lasted as long as it did, because Franklin and Turman had such “opposite lifestyles.” One of Aretha's business associates claims that this was not the first of Glynn's extramarital activities. According to the source, “He was just messing around with everything that moved.”

Whatever happened, the breakup had a devastating effect on Aretha. In one dramatic sweep, she left him and her movie-star-style mansion, and moved to suburban Detroit. This marked the beginning of her reclusive existence in Michigan.

Aretha was never to explain to the press or her co-workers why she left Glynn. She spoke only of her move back to Detroit. According to her, “The main reason that I moved back was my dad's illness. It was a lot easier for me to just come back instead of trying to fly back every two weeks, every month, with my schedule. So it made it a lot easier for me.”

“I love being back home,” she said of Detroit, during this era. “I've had the opportunity to see old friends of mine, like fifteen-, twenty-year friends. People that I haven't seen since I was a teenager: girlfriends and dishing up the dirt and the ‘tee' [gossip] and ‘who drop kicked who?' and all that sort of thing … a little dirt now and then!” she laughs, mimicking her “Jump to It” ad-libs.

“There's one guy who I had a crush on when I was all of twelve years old, and he cracks up whenever I tell him that,” she continued. “It's great being back home. Had I known that Detroit had to offer what it has to offer, before I moved to Los Angeles from New York, I would have moved back to Detroit then.”

In 1983, based on the overwhelming success of
Jump to It
, Aretha went back in the recording studio, with Luther Vandross producing. Although their follow-up album together sold less well than
Jump to It
had, it was just as finely crafted an album as its predecessor. The title cut, “Get It Right” made for a thumping, snapping Number One hit single on the R&B charts, and a second single, “Every Girl (Wants My Guy),” hit the R&B Top Ten.

Cut from the same eight-song album formula of all of Luther's 1981– 83 productions,
Get It Right
reunited Franklin with the same musical professionals she had worked with on
Jump to It
, including Cissy Houston and Darlene Love singing background vocals, Paul Riser's string and horn arrangements, and all of Luther's favorite musicians.

The song “Every Girl (Wants My Guy)” featured Aretha gossiping to her girlfriend Kitty again on the telephone, as a continuation to “Jump to It.” She also sang an elongated version of the Temptations' 1968 hit “I Wish It Would Rain,” complete with the thunder crackling in the background. One of the songs on the album, “Giving In” was written by Aretha's oldest son, Clarence Franklin, and another of her sons, Teddy F. White, Jr., played the “fill guitar” on the song.

The press reviews for
Get It Right
were mixed. While some critics thought that this album was even more successful than
Jump to It
, others thought it was less inspired.
The Washington Post
claimed that “Vandross and Franklin have extended their collaboration into an even more consistent, more rewarding album:
Get It Right
.” On the other hand
The Buffalo Evening News
said, “This album is not as good as last year's
Jump to It
… but that merely means that this is the second best thing Lady Soul has done in years.”

While producers Luther Vandross, Arif Mardin, and Chuck Jackson had been laboring to come up with the right musical setting to shape Aretha's 1980s image, the Creative Services Department at Arista was struggling to give her sense of visual focus as well. The album cover for
Get It Right
presented Aretha at her most glamorous. She was photographed by Francesco Scavullo, famed for his
Cosmopolitan
magazine covers, and she was made up by Way Bandy. The resulting photos that grace this album are exquisite examples of high fashion photography at its best. For
Jump to It
, Harry Langdon had done a fine job of photographing Aretha, but her outfit—a tuxedo jacket and a supportless glitter tube top—was atrocious. Definitely the wrong look for her ample figure. On the back cover photo,
drastic retouching on her cleavage is obvious in an attempt to soften the unflattering look the outfit created.

Aretha's penchant for inappropriate low-cut gowns has often been a cause of controversy. What she perceives as “sexy” often gets her into trouble. In the late 1970s, Aretha appeared on
The Tonight Show
in a dress that was cut so low it was considered risqué by the show's producers. The talk show's host, Johnny Carson, was reportedly embarrassed at the sight of Aretha's dress. Camera crews on that particular show were forced to shoot her from the neck up.

When Barbara Shelley started working with Aretha in the early 1980s, she “pitched” Franklin as a potential guest on
The Tonight Show
. She was completely unaware of the problems that Aretha's low-cut gown had caused. “Gini Fosdick was the talent coordinator at
The Tonight Show
,” Shelley explains. “She was the one who told me that Johnny Carson would love to use Aretha Franklin on
The Tonight Show
because she is the Queen of Soul, and how could they say ‘no' to Aretha Franklin? But I was asked very confidentially, ‘Could you please do something about her cleavage?'”

According to Barbara, the whole event became a running gag between her and Aretha. “It became an ‘in-joke' with us that she had to wear turtleneck evening gowns on
The Tonight Show
!'”

One ex-member of Arista's Creative Services Department reveals that several of Aretha's photographs were extensively retouched to cut away excess pounds. On the inside of Aretha's
Love All the Hurt Away
album, there is this photo of Franklin peering out from behind a door. “Aretha was enormous,” says the source. “Between her boobs and her stomach, there were two tremendous rolls going past the border of the door. Ria Lewerke [Arista's art director] had them do plastic surgery on her. The ‘before' looked like this fat mama, with her belly sticking out to ‘here,' like she was pregnant, and the other one was this woman in this really slinky dress. It was great.”

According to the source, Aretha herself was in love with the results of the retouching, and was so taken by the slimming illusion that she never wanted to go on a diet again; she simply wanted retouching: “She looked so svelte in the picture. She was shaped up perfectly and she loved it.
I mean, she looked great. It was exactly the way she wanted to look, and it was the easiest diet in the world!

“We really worked like dogs to make those album covers correct,” the former Arista employee explains. “We had to fight against her—the outfits that she came to some of the photo sessions in! The things that she wanted for album covers, the things she picked—oh my God! Probably every one of us from the Creative Services Department lost ten years from our lives thanks to Aretha Franklin, and the torture that she put us through over those album covers. We stuck to our guns, that we were going to have beautiful and classic album covers befitting her position in the marketplace as the Queen of Soul. We respected her as the Queen of Soul, and we were going to force her to respect herself—no matter what!”

With her first four albums on Arista, Aretha was successfully brought out of her late-1970s doldrums. Since she had lost a bit of sales momentum with
Get It Right
, it was going to take another dramatic leap forward with her next release to reestablish the strong crossover appeal she once had. There were a couple more obstacles that she had to navigate over before her path back to the top was clear. But Aretha was well on her way, and heading in the right direction.

By the mid-eighties Aretha was back to making hits in a continuous winning streak, including: “Another Night,” “Who's Zoomin' Who,” “Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves,” “Rock-A-Lott,” and “Jimmy Lee.”
(Photo: Arista Records / MJB Photo Archives)

Aretha Franklin has had an amazing recording career that has lasted over fifty years. She grew up in a household where singing stars like Dinah Washington and Sam Cooke would visit. She began singing in the choir of her father's church in Detroit, Michigan, and recorded her first album,
Songs of Faith
, when she was just fourteen years old.
(Photo: James J. Kriegsmann / Rhino Records / MJB Photo Archives)