Aretha Franklin (55 page)

One of the songs, written by Gordon Chambers and Barry J. Eastmond, makes a blatant attempt to conjure up memories of another Aretha song with the same title: “Ain't No Way.” Even though the song cannibalizes the phrase “Ain't No Way,” as well as stealing the “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” line from “Respect,” it merely stands as a reminder of Franklin hits gone-by, yet creates nothing new or exciting.

Without a doubt, the most effervescent song on the album is the single hit, “Wonderful.” Written by Ron Lawrence, Philip “Silky” White, Katrina Willis and Aleese Simmons, it has a catchy chorus line and Aretha sounds comfortable and upbeat on her vocals.

Two of the tracks—”You Are My Joy” and “So Damn Happy”—were written and produced by Aretha herself. “You Are My Joy” is especially fulfilling, because it is one of those rare moments when adult Aretha Franklin just sits at the piano and plays the lead part of her accompanying music.

Internationally, the
So Damn Happy
album drew mixed reviews and it didn't become a huge seller, but it was to bring her acclaim amongst her fans and her peers. Some people found it dull; others loved it.

Rolling Stone
magazine's Barry Walters claimed, “The Queen of Soul is still the Queen. But that doesn't mean the material on Aretha Franklin's latest album is deserving of her crown … on 1998's
A Rose Is Still a Rose
, Lauryn Hill, Puff Daddy and other hot hitmakers plied fresh beats and old-school samples to aim Aretha's R&B at young ears … Ten different producers replace
Rose's
hip-hop energy with an adult-contemporary slickness that sometimes makes the sixty-one-year-old legend's voice seem shrill. Her Highness deserves more R-E-S-P-E-C-T than this.”
(5)

Betty Clarke, in England's
The Guardian
, bluntly claimed, “Aretha Franklin is demanding that everyone swallow a hefty dose of positivity.
And she has chosen the homogenized mediocrity of modern R&B to do it … In this misconceived and—judging by the strained high notes— dangerous attempt to impress the kids, she limits herself to shooby-do-ing and sounding bemused. It's a depressing departure. During ‘The Only Thing Missin',' her once-steely control turns to mush, and notes fly at us like blunt knives. Burt Bacharach's ‘Falling Out of Love' sounds like a Barbra Streisand cast-off, with Franklin serving up cold karaoke … even the feisty words and voice of Mary J. Blige can't stop Franklin ultimately floundering and scatting into nothingness.”
(6)

John Bush, in
The All Music Guide
rather liked the new album. He claimed, “During the five years that separated
So Damn Happy
from her previous album,
A Rose Is Still a Rose
, Aretha Franklin made the celebrity-gossip pages many more times than she earned airplay on the radio … Most of the songs, led by ‘The Only Thing Missin',' the title track, and ‘Holdin' On,' are up to a high level, catchy and easy to understand … a song called ‘Wonderful' that evokes the glory days of ‘70s soul more than any other song here. Aretha shouldn't need to resort to overkill to proclaim her joy at making music; the songs on
So Damn Happy
are all the proof her fans need to understand that her talent remains undiminished nearly fifty years after her debut as a secular act.”
(7)

Likewise, Jack Smith glowingly wrote in his British
BBC
review, “This, her first studio album in five years since
A Rose Is Still a Rose
… she again reaffirms why today's pretenders to her crown can only look up and marvel at her boundless talent … in
So Damn Happy
her legion of fans have a slick and superior album of depth, vision and soul that's truly one to savour.”
(8)

On the record charts,
So Damn Happy
made it to Number Thirty-three in the United States on
Billboard
's album chart, and to Number Eleven on the R&B Albums chart. Unlike its predecessor, it was not certified
Gold
, meaning it sold less than 500,000 copies. However, two of the songs charted on the American R&B Singles chart: “The Only Thing Missin'” (Number Fifty-three) and “Wonderful” (Number Forty-six).

Aretha has long been the darling of the Grammy Awards, so it was little surprise when the song “Wonderful” received a nomination in the category of “Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance.” The other songs
nominated in that category were “Hold Me” by Earth, Wind and Fire, “Comin' from Where I'm From” by Anthony Hamilton, “Way Up There” by Patti LaBelle, and “He Proposed” by Kelly Price.

It came as a nice surprise when Aretha won the award on February 8, 2004, which was her eighteenth Grammy Award. It signaled the fact that she was still around and still very impressively making music that people loved to hear, forty-three years since her first single release.

So Damn Happy
signaled the end of an era for Aretha Franklin. It was time for her to sign a new recording contract, and she and the newly aligned Arista Records began negotiations. However, Aretha wanted more money than Arista wanted to pay to continue to release her music. After a career dispute with Arista Records, her musical home for twenty-three years, she found herself without a recording contract. Although everyone seems to look at her fourteen years at Atlantic Records as her heyday, while she was on Arista Records she won just as many Grammys (ten additional trophies), and had her longest run on the charts.

In 2004, the accolades continued to pour in for Aretha as
Rolling Stone
magazine declared Aretha artist Number Nine on their list of “The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.” The following year, in 2005, the Queen of Soul announced she was starting her own private recording label, Aretha's Records.

The music world was taken by surprise when one of Aretha's strongest supporters, Luther Vandross, suddenly died on July 1, 2005. He had suffered from a stroke on April 16, 2003, and he never fully recovered. He won two Grammy Awards for his final album,
Dance with My Father
, in 2004, and his career was basically on “hold” in anticipation of him regaining his strength. It was not to happen.

Over the years, Luther's adoring public had watched in awe as his weight drastically went up and down in time. He started out his career dramatically overweight, then he would lose weight, then he would gain it back, and then he would lose it again. Whether or not that played a factor in his sudden death at the age of fifty-four of heart failure, it certainly didn't help matters.

When his funeral took place on July 8, 2005 in New York City, several of his music industry friends were there to say “goodbye” to Luther.
Amongst them were Cissy Houston, Dionne Warwick, Patti LaBelle, Alicia Keys, Valerie Simpson, Usher, Stevie Wonder, and Aretha Franklin. Luther's body was on view at Frank E. Campbell on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, which is the funeral home that has played host to so many celebrities, including Judy Garland. The two day wake included services at Riverside Church in Harlem. Dressed in a tasteful beige coat and matching beige hat, Aretha bid “farewell” to Luther in song, by singing “Amazing Grace.”

On September 20, 2005, Clive Davis' new label, J Records, released the album
Luther Vandross: An All-Star Tribute
. It included performances by many of Luther's friends and admirers, covering some of his greatest hits, including Beyoncé and Stevie Wonder (“So Amazing,”) Donna Summer (“Power of Love,”) Elton John (“Anyone Who Had a Heart” duet with Luther,) Fantasia (“‘Til My Baby Comes Home,”) Patti LaBelle (“Here and Now,”) and Aretha Franklin (“A House is Not a Home.”) The album was made utilizing several different producers. In Aretha's case, she turned to her old friend from Atlantic Records, Arif Mardin. As per her habit, Miss Franklin's vocals were recorded in Detroit. In other words, the musicians still journeyed to the queen.

The year 2005 was quite a winning one for Aretha. She became the second woman to be inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame. The first woman to have received that honor was Madonna, who was also a founding member of that organization. Closer to home, Franklin was inducted into the Michigan Rock & Roll Legends Hall of Fame.

However, the year's crowning achievement came on November 9, when Aretha went to the White House in Washington D.C., to receive the Medal of Freedom lifetime achievement award from President George W. Bush. There were fourteen different recipients that year, including: actress Carol Burnett, golf pro Arnold Palmer, boxer Muhammad Ali, and broadcasting legend Paul Harvey.

To increase her visibility even further, on February 5, 2006 Aretha performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” with Aaron Neville at
Super Bowl XL
, which is traditionally the year's biggest sports event. That year the game was viewed by a televised audience of 90.7 million people.

When the 2006 Grammy nominations were announced, Aretha was again nominated in the category of “Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance,” this time around for her Luther tribute version of “A House is Not a Home.” Aretha won her nineteenth Grammy Award on February 8, 2006, competing against Mariah Carey's “Mine Again,” Fantasia's “Summertime,” Alicia Keys' “If I Was Your Woman,” and John Legend's “Stay with You.”

Although she never studied music in college, Aretha continued to rack up honorary degrees from different colleges around the country. On May 13, 2006 Aretha was presented with an honorary Doctor of Music degree by the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.

Also that year, Aretha announced the upcoming release of her next album,
A Woman Falling Out of Love,
which was intended to be on her own label, Aretha's Records. Although Franklin announced that she had recorded duets for the album with gospel singer Karen Clark-Sheard, pop-rock star Richard Marx, and country artist Faith Hill, the recordings sat in the can for the rest of the decade.

The only Aretha Franklin album to be released in 2006 was one issued by Sony / BMG Music entitled
Joy to the World
. Now that Sony Music owned all of Aretha's Columbia catalog from the 1960s and all of her Arista recordings from the 1980s to 2003, they had the ability to put together their own compilations combining both eras of her career. The
Joy to the World
album contains her three Columbia Christmas singles, “Kissin' By the Mistletoe,” “Winter Wonderland,” and “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire).” It took her Arista version of “Joy to the World” from 1994 and combined these four actual Christmas songs with gospel songs from her
One Faith, One Lord, One Baptism
album and a couple of standards from her days at Columbia (“Over the Rainbow” and “Ac-cent-tu-ate the Positive”). What it did more than anything else, was to make the public long for a true Christmas album from Aretha, not a stitched-together one like this.

Aretha filled much of 2007 with personal appearances at benefits and other high profile events. She also did several concert dates across America. Some of the events she participated in were outrageously commercial, and other events were classy and sophisticated. On April 1, 2007, Aretha sang
“America the Beautiful” at
WrestleMania 23
. On May 14, 2007, Franklin was presented with an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Reviewing her at the Wolf Trap music venue in Vienna, Virginia, on July 5 of 2007, J. Freedom du Lac of
The Washington Post
claimed, “Franklin remains a force of nature, even after all these years of brilliant belting. She burrows into a lyric until she finds its emotional core. And her voice is still an astonishing instrument. Yes, she's lost some of her power and range (it has, after all, been some forty years since she ascended to the throne as the Queen of Soul). But Franklin continues to sing with incredible intensity and command while working mostly in her lower and middle registers.”
(9)

The reviewer got a particular charge out of Aretha's love of eccentrically lavish fashion statements. According to du Lac, “Franklin sashayed onto the stage in a robin's-egg blue evening gown—a satiny fishtail affair that exploded into a puff of feathers around the knees. With a matching satin wrap weaved around her shoulders and arms and a double strand of pearls hugging her bosom, Franklin wasted no time in getting down to business.”
(9)

The review also pointed out that Aretha was still gamely exploring new material in her concert appearances. According to the article, “Franklin also performed a playful, properly swinging version of ‘Beyond the Sea,' which featured a knockout vocal complete with authoritative scatting. It was a reminder that … Franklin is the female soul singer against whom all others are measured.”
(9)

As another accolade, in 2007 Aretha Franklin's recording of “Respect” was voted a Legendary Michigan Song by MichiganRockAndRollLegends. com. And in August of that year, when Aretha attended the opening of the US Open Tennis Match with her former boyfriend, Willie Wilkerson, rumors began circulate that she was finally planning to marry him. Wherever she showed up, the Queen of Soul was making headlines.

During this era, Aretha's physical size continued to grow. She was carrying around a lot of extra weight, and people were starting to talk publicly about her obvious disregard for her health. It had been nearly ten years since she had finally quit smoking, and she had steadily been gaining
weight since then. Some very unflattering photographs of her started to appear in magazines and tabloid newspapers.

However, the public's interest in Aretha continued unabated. She wasn't actively recording and releasing albums like she used to, so in 2007, two of her former record labels compiled new releases out of material they had in their vaults. Atlantic Records, via its subsidiary label, Rhino Records, issued a two-disc recording of
Aretha Franklin: Rare & Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of The Queen of Soul
. The album of “previously unreleased” Aretha recordings was one of the last projects that Jerry Wexler worked on. He not only served as the album's “compilation producer,” but he also used several of his recollections about working with Aretha, in the liner notes booklet.