Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (29 page)

“The evening for Ruth turned out good,” Cecil remembered, “but afterwards Aretha fell back into depression. These were rough times. I couldn’t figure out how to break her out of the blues. These blues were deep. Ken certainly wanted to help, but you can only help Aretha so much. At a certain point she resists help. She says, ‘You’re making me feel helpless. Leave me alone. Back off.’ I know when to back off. I’m not sure Ken did.”

“The other thing is that Ken was encroaching into Cecil’s territory,” said Ruth. “Aretha’s first serious man—Ted White—had managed her and I could understand why Ken saw himself falling into that role. But after Ted, that role had been given to Cecil by none other than Reverend C. L. Franklin, the man Aretha respected more than anyone in the world. When it came to management, Cecil was a lock. I was able to mentor Cecil, but I knew better than to invade his territory. When it comes to advising talent, boundaries are critical. You don’t want to step on the toes of people who have known the artist a lot longer than you. I’m not sure Ken was wise to get Aretha in so many different business situations—from
movies to clothing lines. Looking back, those plans faded. I’m not blaming Ken. Aretha’s always been big on branding. From the first years we worked together she talked about opening an Aretha soul-food restaurant in every major city. Not even one ever appeared. Cecil and I couldn’t tell her outright that she lacked the business skills to pull it off, but we knew how to distract her. Ken kept pushing.”

In speaking about Ken, Aretha was always complimentary. In her long litany of male friends, he received her highest marks. However, the relationship didn’t last because she felt that Ken didn’t grant Cecil the respect that her brother deserved.

“The cracks in Ree’s relationship to Ken certainly contributed to her nervous condition,” said Carolyn. “This was her second or third so-called full breakdown. I mean that literally—where she just couldn’t write, rehearse, record, or perform.”

“But here’s the thing about my sister,” said Erma. “You think these breakdowns are a pervasive pattern. And in a sense, they are. Ultimately, though, she doesn’t stay down. Ultimately, she gets back up. It may take her a while, but her commitment to her career is strong as steel.”

By springtime, Aretha felt renewed.

“Rev. Wyatt T. Walker’s Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem got a surprise visit Easter Sunday morning from soul sister No. 1 Aretha Franklin,” wrote
Jet
. “In response to a request from Rev. Walker, Aretha got up and sang ‘Amazing Grace’ for surprised church-goers. According to one observer, it was almost 30 minutes after she finished singing before the church calmed down so the service could continue.”

That same month she sang “Rock Steady” on
Soul Train
.

In July, she played the Newport Jazz Festival concert at the Nassau Coliseum along with Donny Hathaway, Duke Ellington, and Ray Charles.

“Angel” started making its climb up the charts.

“ ‘Angel’ definitely revived her spirits,” said Carolyn. “She was
really afraid that
Hey Now
would be a total sales failure. I think she sent me a dozen roses two or three different times to thank me for the song. The hit put her back on track, and she and Ken were getting along again. When you’re in the music business, a hit is something that makes everyone happy and seems to solve all your problems—at least for a while.”

By the holidays, Aretha was upbeat. She hired a yacht and went on a cruise to the Bahamas, resting up before her upcoming 1974 tour. In addition to Ken Cunningham, she brought Cecil, his wife, Earline, and Norman Dugger, her personal assistant and longtime road manager.

“After being in and out of all those hospitals, the cruise did her a world of good,” said Dugger, who would serve as Aretha’s fiercely loyal lieutenant for the next thirty-eight years. “She was just about as relaxed as she could ever be. Aretha’s never ever completely at ease, but for the most part the cruise did a lot to cool her out. She kept talking about all these dishes she wanted to cook up and put into a book.”

Jet
reported that “Aretha Franklin returned from a yacht cruise around the Bahamas with ideas for a cookbook that would include recipes like Ken’s paella (for Ken Cunningham), Norman’s potato salad (for Norman Dugger), and a collection of other jaw teasers like pecan pie, fried ribs, home made ice cream and cracklin’ bread. The Soul Queen still insists that despite all the tasting and testing she’ll maintain her size nine to 10 figure after dealing with all the good recipes. She’s still on the vinegar cider and honey and water conditioner. A mixture of the three ingredients three times a day will keep those calories away.”

On January 14, 1974, she went into the studio to start recording what would be
With Everything I Feel in Me
, an album that would mark a further decline in quality and sales.

The revealing cover has her in a mink coat that’s slipped down her shoulders to show major cleavage. She has a come-hither, check-me-out smile on her ultra-slender face. There are two Carolyn originals, an original Aretha song, and a bunch of covers, all in
the heavy-gospel-pop-R&B recipe cooked up by the singer and her coproducers.

“There’s only so long you can continue the formula,” said Wexler. “We were aware of this. We thought that by including a couple of Bacharach/David songs—‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ and ‘You’ll Never Get to Heaven’—we might strike lightning in the bottle, but we didn’t. Because she had successfully thinned down, she was in an ebullient mood. She wasn’t high on drugs but definitely on an emotional high. She was certain this would be the greatest album of her career. I remember questioning her about her inclusion of a love song by James Cleveland. James is King of Gospel but hardly king of love songs. I thought it was filler. Aretha thought it was great. It stayed. And the entire album laid a giant egg. It’s the first time an Aretha Franklin Atlantic album failed to have a single in the top forty.”

Before the record was completed, Aretha went on tour. In early March, she played Chicago, where, according to
Jet
, “She electrified the capacity audience at the Auditorium Theater with her new size-8 figure. Garbed in a painfully-tight white satin, silver-trimmed backless pant suit, her majesty leaped to the piano and revealed to her subjects: ‘I looked at myself in the mirror and said to myself, Go on child, you done really got yourself together.’ ”

A week later, she played the Apollo. John Rockwell’s review for the
New York Times
indicated what the Aretha Franklin show would be like for decades to come:

“Miss Franklin seems intent these days on approximating a kind of Liza Minnelli cabaret glamour, complete with glittering cutaway costumes, a top hat and supper-club bumps and grinds.”

On March 25, 1974, Aretha celebrated her thirty-second birthday.

“Ken gave her a surprise party at their East Side town house,” said Ruth. “Ken is almost as dangerous in the kitchen as Aretha. The boy can burn. He assembled us in the living room, and when
Ree came downstairs, wearing her dressing gown, we jumped up and sent her into shock. She loved it.”

Three days later
Jet
hit the newsstands with this item:

“Ken Cunningham, Aretha Franklin’s consort and manager, is also a screenwriter and has a dynamite movie script… and is looking for investors to match his bread and turn it into a movie.”

“I planted that item,” said Ruth Bowen. “I planted most of the press items that Aretha felt would help the cause. The black press was always more than willing to accommodate her. I didn’t always like doing it because many of the items were nothing more than ads for investors in the projects that she and Ken were cooking up. I knew those projects weren’t going anywhere, but rather than argue with the Queen, I did her bidding. After all was said and done, that was my job.”

In May,
Jet
published still another cover story of Aretha, and this one didn’t make brother Cecil happy. The reporter wrote, “It is to Ken that she looks for direction in most of what she does professionally. He produced the show that she recently put on at the Apollo and which she will be taking to Japan for a concert tour this summer and to Europe in the fall. Ken also influences greatly when and where she’ll appear.”

“More and more the world was getting the idea that Ken was her manager,” said Cecil, “not me.”

“ ‘No one is going to drive a wedge between you and your sister,’ I told Cecil when he called to complain,” said Ruth. “ ‘Just be patient. Things will come around. Meanwhile, if she wants to give Ken a little of the spotlight, let her. Now is not the time to make waves. She’s happy, and that’s all that counts.’ Cecil listened to me. He always did.”

In the June issue of
Ebony
, Ruth turned the spotlight on herself. She arranged for a feature article with a headline that read: “First Lady of Talent Booking.” The piece described Bowen’s toughness in the white-male-dominated business. At the time, Queen Booking was twelve years old. Her star client remained Aretha, who told the reporter that “Ruth is my friend as well as my agent and she is
unique in that she cares as much about you, the person, as the you that earns her 10 percent. She tells you straight when she thinks you’ve gone crooked—on or off stage.”

A photo showed Ruth consulting with Aretha on her wardrobe for an upcoming performance. Bowen was also quoted as saying how she “represented most of the Motown acts, from the Supremes to Stevie Wonder.” As the acts grew, though, they were raided by big-time bookers and often “placed with a white agency.” According to Ruth, her biggest star resisted the raiders. “Those cats just didn’t know Aretha,” said Ruth. “Nothing can shake her from her loyalties and her love.”

During the summer when the Watergate scandal resulted in Nixon’s resignation, Cecil remembered a certain joy in the Franklin camp.

“All of us—Daddy, Ken, Aretha—couldn’t wait to see Nixon bite the dust,” said Cecil. “We had a Good-Bye, Tricky Dick party the weekend after his resignation.”

In October, the relentless public relations campaign in the black press continued. Once again, it was Ruth Bowen who convinced
Ebony
to put Aretha on the cover.

“I promised them total access and exclusive photos,” she said. “I said I wanted the emphasis to be on the New Aretha—slim, trim, and sexy. That’s the story I got. Aretha was thrilled.”

The article talked about her favorite designers—Stephen Burrows of New York and Boyd Clopton of LA. The thrust of the story was her weight loss. Photos showed her playing pool in her town house, practicing a golf shot on a New York course, and modeling a revealing new outfit. There was also discussion of a diet book (which was never written). She revealed that her weight-loss method was moderation. She liked to take a spoon and dip it in the corner of a pot filled with fattening food.

“When I read the article,” said Ruth, “I thought,
Girlfriend is talking way too much about food. If she ever puts on that weight again, she’s gonna have some backtracking to do.
But Aretha has an obsession with
food. There are times she can leave it alone. This was one of those times. But ultimately the obsession bites her back. The way some folk get comfort of drugs, that’s how Ree is with food. I forget the exact year, but it was sometime in the seventies that she finally gave up booze and never really drank again. But food’s different. You can never give up food. So if you’re addicted to sugar or bread or fried chicken, well, it’s almost too easy to fall off the wagon and get your fix.”

At the end of January 1975, Franklin appeared on
The Midnight Special
television show. With her red-hued blown-out Afro and her turquoise feather wrap, she sat down on the piano bench next to Ray Charles and belted out “Takes Two to Tango,” a revisiting of the song Ray had recorded with Betty Carter fourteen years earlier.

She continued her tradition of throwing herself splashy birthday parties. Her thirty-third took place at the Hotel Pierre in New York, and the Spinners performed.

“The Spinners owed Aretha big-time,” said Ruth Bowen. “When their Motown contract was up in the early seventies, it was Aretha who pulled their coat to Atlantic. She got them on the label. That’s around the time when Philippe Wynne became their lead singer. Aretha, like all of us, recognized Philippe as one of the most original soul styles to come along since Sam Cooke. And of course it was on Atlantic that the Spinners had those monster hits like ‘One of a Kind (Love Affair)’ and ‘Mighty Love.’ That night, they sang for free. Hell, they would have paid Aretha for the honor of singing at her party.”

A week later she flew out to LA for the Oscars.
The Godfather Part II
dominated the show. For the second time, Frank Sinatra introduced Aretha to the worldwide Academy Awards audience. She sang a forgettable song from a forgettable movie: “Wherever Love Takes Me” from
Gold
.

In June,
Jet
reported this Ruth Bowen plant:

“The soul queen is and should be especially proud of her two eldest children, Clarence and Edward, who are ‘A’ students. She took them out of private school a year ago and put them into a public school in New York so they could stay close to ‘real people.’ ”

“I love each of Aretha’s children,” said Ruth, “and diligently reported exactly what Aretha had instructed me to report. But I also knew that, like all children, they had their challenges. Those challenges would continue throughout the years. But whenever there was a problem, Aretha worked fast and furiously to make sure it stayed out of the press. She was adamant on telling the world that her kids were normal. Well, I don’t believe anyone is really ‘normal,’ especially children of stars. At the same time, I didn’t blame her for protecting their privacy. And to this day, no one can get any information about them out of me. That’s how it should be.”

A
Billboard
review of her May 27 concert at the Westchester Premier Theater in Greenburgh, New York, gave a composite picture of her mid-1970s show:

“Besides looking like an angel in a white, slightly sequined outfit, Aretha Franklin managed to sing like one.”