Amazing Grace

Aretha Franklin

album cover

Sunday Morning with the Queen

Aretha Franklin grew up in church, and from her earliest torch-song recordings (collected on Columbia's excellent Jazz to Soul anthology) through hits like "Respect" and "Spanish Harlem," she sang as though trying to rouse listeners from a Sunday-services slumber. This was no accident: Her father, the celebrated Detroit church-man Reverend C. L. Franklin, brought home such friends as Sam Cooke, who began his career in gospel before crossing over to soul stardom. Franklin told biographer David Ritz that she learned the secrets of phrasing sitting in the family room.

In 1972 after a string of hits, Franklin took the first of many detours, putting her pop career on hold to make Amazing Grace, a two-disc live compendium of gospel classics. Following Cooke's example, the fiery mezzo-soprano doesn't change anything about her delivery, applying the formidable lung power she displayed on "Respect" to songs of faith, gratitude, and praise. Franklin's steady, authoritative phrasing galvanizes her accomplices: On the choir warhorse "How I Got Over," Franklin sends the members of the Southern California Community Choir into a euphoric overdrive they somehow sustain throughout this two-hour affair. Her father, known in his day as the "Million Dollar Voice," is on hand to provide benedictions, but it's daughter Aretha's billion-dollar voice—an instrument that's both steely in its resolve and Silly-Putty supple—that does most of the rousing. This is still the best example of an R&B singer going back to her "roots" to sing gospel.

Genre: Gospel
Released: 1972, Atlantic
Key Tracks: "How I Got Over," "Amazing Grace"
Catalog Choice: Live at the Fillmore West
Next Stop: Elvis Presley: Ultimate Gospel
After That: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers: The Gospel Soul of Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers
Book Pages: 289–290