Into the Groove (34)

Hello, last week at Into The Groove , the focus was on the first contender for the title Queen Of Soul, Etta James. However, todays Queen gets at least as many if not more votes, Aretha Franklin. Daughter of a Baptist minister, singing gospels in church came naturally, giving birth to two sons before the age of sixteen must have raised some eyebrows. However it didnt derail her singing career, in fact she packed up and went to New York to persue a singing career away from the gospel..Not that the first women to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had success come easy, in fact it took another six years and a label change for her to land her first big hit, Respect...indeed. From then on things went crescendo...some meager years in the late seventies and early eighties before she scored some global hits in a row. She was the first black woman to appear on the cover of Time magazine...doesall that make her the Queen of Soul ? Hmmm, having at thing against flying doesn't help and dare i say she failed as godmother to Whitney Houston, and didnt experience the highs and lows that an drug addicted Etta James all conquered, so on the basis of all that my vote goes to Etta. Today however is about Aretha , 43 tracks .... a 2,5 hours compilation of her hits..."What you want, baby i got it...."

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Franklin was born on March 25, 1942, in Memphis, Tennessee to the Rev. C. L. Franklin, a Baptist minister, and Barbara Siggers Franklin. Aretha's parents had a troubled relationship and they separated when Aretha was six. Her mother died of a heart attack when she was ten. Adept at the piano as well as having a gifted voice, Franklin became a child prodigy. With her sisters Carolyn and Erma (both of whom would also have recording careers), she sang at the Detroit church of her father, Reverend C.L. Franklin, while growing up in the 1950s. By the age of fourteen, she signed a record deal with Checker Records, where her father recorded his sermons and gospel vocal recordings and issued The Gospel Soul of Aretha Franklin in 1956.

Teenage pregnancies derailed Franklin's gospel career but despite having two children by the time she was 17, Franklin left Detroit for New York aged 18 in search of fame and fortune, leaving her sons in the care of their grandmother. Instead of performing gospel and inspired by the successes of idols Dinah Washington and Sam Cooke, Aretha decided to secure herself a deal as a pop artist, she signed with Columbia Records in 1960. Her recordings during that time reflected a jazz influence inspired by Washington and moved away from her gospel roots. Franklin initially scored a few hits on Columbia , however, by the end of 1966, with little commercial success in six years with Columbia and desperate for a sound, she accepted an offer to sign with Atlantic Records. According to Franklin years later, "they made me sit down on the piano and the hits came."

In 1967 Franklin issued her first Atlantic single, "I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)", a blues ballad that introduced listeners to her gospel style. Her next single, "Respect", firmly launched Franklin to superstardom. Written and originally recorded by Otis Redding, Franklin's feminist version of the song became her signature tune for life hitting #1 on both the R&B and the Pop charts and helping her Atlantic debut album, I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You, reach million-seller status. Much of that success is due to producer Jerry Wexler, who finally unleashed the soulful intensity so long kept under wraps during her Columbia tenure. In early 1968 Franklin won her first two Grammies (for "Respect"), including the first Grammy awarded in the "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance" category, she went on to win it eight times in a row.

By the end of the 1960s, Franklin's position as The Queen of Soul was firmly established. Her albums were also hot sellers; one in particular, 1972's Amazing Grace, eventually sold over two million US copies. By 1975, however, with the expanding exposure of Disco and the popularity of fellow Atlantic artist Roberta Flack, relations between Franklin and Atlantic Records were starting to strain. As a result, Aretha was recording poor material such as 1975's listless You album, and her record sales declined dramatically. Her later period Atlantic albums including Sweet Passion, Almighty Fire and La Diva were critical as well as sales failures and to top it off Franklin owed major debts to the IRS for failure to pay back taxes. Her recording contract with Atlantic ran out at the end of 1979 and neither Aretha nor the company had any desire to renew it. On June 10, 1979, Franklin's minister father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, was seriously wounded during what was said to be an attempted robbery at his Linwood Avenue home in Detroit, leaving him in a comatose state in which he remained until he died in the summer of 1984.

In 1980, Franklin's career was given a much-needed boost thanks to a cameo appearance on The Blues Brothers, singing Think as Mrs. Matt Murphy. That same year, Clive Davis signed Aretha to his Arista Records. It was the spectacular 1982 album, Jump To It, produced by longtime admirer Luther Vandross, and the title-track 45 that gave Aretha renewed R&B chart-topping and pop success.The album enjoyed a long run at #1 on Billboard's R&B Albums chart, it won an American Music Award, was nominated for a Grammy and was certified Gold in early 1983 . The following year Franklin and Vandross collaborated again on the disappointing Get It Right. But in 1985, Franklin's sound was commercialized into a glossy pop sound on , Who's Zoomin' Who?. Yielding smash hits like the Motown-influenced "Freeway of Love" , the title track and her duet with rock duo Eurythmics, "Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves", the album became the first Platinum certification of Aretha's entire career, reintroducing her sound to a younger generation of fans.

In 1986, Franklin did nearly as well with an album simply titled Aretha which yielded her first number-one pop single in two decades with the George Michael duet, "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)". The album is noteworthy for the striking cover which was Andy Warhol's last work before his death. When Aretha was taken out of print, it had sold over nine million copies worldwide. Aretha returned to gospel in 1987 with her album One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism which was recorded live at her New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit. However, the disc was a far cry from her 1972 effort Amazing Grace and had middling sales. Subsequent follow-ups such as 1989's Through The Storm and 1991's What You See Is What You Sweat sold poorly and failed to produce any major mainstream hits. Her career got a slight boost in 1993 when she scored a dance-club hit with "Deeper Love" off the Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit soundtrack. In 1994, she scored another hit with the Babyface-produced ballad, "Willing To Forgive" which hit the Top 5 of Billboard's R&B chart and #26 on the Hot 100.

Franklin returned to prominence with her 1998 album, A Rose Is Still A Rose. The album's mixture of urban contemporary, hip-hop soul and soul was a departure from Franklin's previous material. The title track, produced by Lauryn Hill, gave her a smash hit on the R&B and Pop charts and earned a gold single while the album was certified gold also, the first time since 1986's Aretha that any of the singer's albums went gold. Since, Franklin has continued recording if only sporadically. Her most recent release was 2003's So Damn Happy, which included the Grammy-winning track "Wonderful". Shortly after its release, Franklin left Arista Records after twenty-three years with the company. She has since started her own label, Aretha Records, and plans to issue her long-promised new album, A Woman Falling Out Of Love in 2008.


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Aretha Franklin - The Very Best Of Aretha Franklin - Respect ( 03, 155min. ^ 299mb)

An amazing number of Aretha compilations have been released , more then 60 this millenium (7,5 years), more then the 36 years before that put together....ah yes every music exec is trying to make some money of Aretha . I wonder if any of them ever donated some money to institutions that support teenage mothers, respect ? i doubt it...



Aretha Franklin - The Very Best Of 1 (^99mb)

01 - Respect (2:24)
02 - Think (2:16)
03 - Spanish Harlem (3:29)
04 - (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (2:44)
05 - I Say A Little Prayer (3:32)
06 - Son Of A Preacher Man (3:16)
07 - I Never Loved A Man (2:49)
08 - Chain Of Fools (2:46)
09 - Don't Play That Song (2:58)
10 - Angel (4:27)
11 - Border Song (Holy Moses) (3:19)
12 - Rock Steady (3:11)
13 - See Saw (2:43)
14 - The House That Jack Built (2:18)
15 - Oh No Not My Baby (2:50)
16 - Until You Come Back To Me (3:24)
17 - Good Times (2:05)

Aretha Franklin - The Very Best Of 2 (^99mb)

18 - Since You've Been Gone (2:22)
19 - You're All I Need To Get By (3:34)
20 - Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing (3:47)
21 - Do Right Woman - Do Right Man (3:12)
22 - Share Your Love With Me (3:18)
23 - Something He Can Feel (6:14)
24 - Ain't No Way (4:13)
25 - Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves (4:14)
26 - I Knew You Were Waiting (4:00)
27 - Through The Storm (4:20)
28 - Love All The Hurt Away (4:07)
29 - Willing To Forgive (4:08)
30 - Let It Be (3:28)*

Aretha Franklin - The Very Best Of 3 (^99mb)

31- Never Let Me Go (2:51)
32 - Night Time Is The Right Time (4:45)
33 - Call Me (3:52)
34 - Drown In My Tears (4:03)
35 - People Get Ready (3:41)
36 - My Song (3:29)
37 - Dark End Of The Street (4:39)
38 - Today I Sing The Blues (4:21)
39 - A Rose Is Still A Rose (3:58)
40 - Who's Zoomin' Who? (4:41)
41 - Freeway Of Love (4:10)
42 - Day Dreaming (3:56)
43 - Bridge Over Troubled Water (5:34)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !