Aretha Arrives: How Aretha Franklin Proved She Could Go The Distance

The album kicks off with a groovy, horn-fuelled version of The Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. Next up is the standard You Are My Sunshine, which Franklin takes to the church on its way to Muscle Shoals, while her backing vocalists – her insanely talented sisters Erma and Carolyn – join in a call-and-response as Aretha builds up to kicking the song off. It’s a virtually unrecognisable arrangement – to its absolute credit. Punchy and groovy, it is also – incredibly – quite sexy.

The romantic ballad Never Let Me Go is gorgeous and, in fact, signposts the sort of material Franklin would go on to record in the 80s, her voice here sounding much older than her 25 years. It’s a song of longing, regret and worldly wisdom – all of which Franklin captures spectacularly. Another singer with a golden voice would breathe life into the song in 1993: Luther Vandross.

Unlocking something beautiful

Aretha Arrives takes a swift pit stop at an unlikely little number: 96 Tears, a garage-rock staple released a year earlier, in 1966, by ? And The Mysterians. Though worlds apart from the gritty original, Franklin belts it out brilliantly. And that’s the thing about her voice: it is a skeleton key. Whatever song she sings, she unlocks something beautiful in it. She’s just as confident with a raunchy R&B dancer or a bruised ballad as she is a powerful gospel classic. Even if the song didn’t look or sound like something that would suit her voice, she would still find a way to make it truly her own.

Other covers on Aretha Arrives include the 1944 number I Wonder, originally recorded by Cecil Grant, a brilliant brass-backed version of Going Down Slow by St Louis Jimmy Oden, and That’s Life, most famously recorded by Frank Sinatra.

Willie Nelson’s Night Life also appears on the album. The red-headed stranger originally wrote it for his 1965 album, Country Willie: His Own Songs (which also featured his standout hit, Hello Walls). Here, however, Franklin replaces the song’s country feel with a huge dose of soul – to brilliant effect. Of course, if you wanted to inject that soulful feel into your songs, there’s only really one backing group that could help: The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, of whom organist Spooner Oldham, drummer Roger Hawkins, guitarist Jimmy Johnson and bassist Tommy Cogbill all appear here. Those glorious Swampers (as they were also known) are on terrific form and make Night Life a real standout.

Ever more powerful

Of the three original songs on Aretha Arrives, perhaps the best is Ain’t Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around), which has some of the perfect qualities for a great Aretha Franklin number: drums that make you want to get up and shuffle, and those incomparable Sweet Inspirations (most notably the phenomenal and much underrated Cissy Houston) on backing vocals, delivering the same kind of “ooh” sounds that make Respect one of the best Aretha Franklin songs.

The song was written by Aretha’s sister, the mega-watt talent that was Carolyn Franklin, whose sisterly intuition always meant she could write perfect numbers for Aretha. Here that perfection takes the shape of a song about holding one’s ground and refusing to be sucked into another bad relationship: “Ain’t nobody gonna talk sweet talk to me/… I’m gonna take my love and put it on the shelf/Ain’t gonna give it to nobody else,” Aretha sings. Given that, while recording I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You earlier in the year, her then husband, Ted White, started an altercation that stopped the recording process, and that, by 1968, Aretha would be separated from him (the pair subsequently divorced, in 1969), the song feels ever more powerful.

The only single released from Aretha Arrives was Baby, I Love You. You’d be forgiven for assuming it would be a cover of The Ronettes’ 1964 hit of the same name, but this is another original, penned by Ronnie Shannon, who also wrote Franklin’s hit single I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You). It proved a smart move to work with Shannon again. Baby, I Love You is a driving little soul number lifted to great heights, with The Swampers working their musical magic. They are also joined by King Curtis on tenor saxophone and guitarist Joe South (familiar to Bob Dylan fans for his work on Blonde On Blonde).

South would also be the man to provide that unforgettable tremolo guitar intro on Franklin’s Chain Of Fools, on the following year’s Lady Soul album. Baby, I Love You went to No.4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No.1 on the R&B charts, while Aretha Arrives would land at No.5 in the US, proving that people were ready to sit up and listen. It wasn’t Aretha that had arrived, it was her fans – and they were in it for the long haul.

Check out our best Aretha Franklin songs to find out just why she remains the “Queen Of Soul”.