Franklin’s mesmerizing histrionics push her backing vocalists to excel – at the 3:38 mark, they almost steal the track with three wondrous, breathy exhales. On the Columbia sides of the early Sixties, she laid into standards like then-current stars Sinatra or Nat King Cole, rivaling her backing orchestras for sheer power. “CBS didn’t want her to go, but they could not reverse themselves to help her become a star,” said producer and arranger Clyde Otis in October 3rd, 1969 found Franklin switching things up, recording not in New York but at Miami’s Criteria Studios. But Franklin makes it her own: The note she hits near the two-minute-mark probably knocked the engineer off their chair. “She went right for the piano, where, without a word, she played piano over the existing ‘Do Right’ track. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech as well as other pivotal events from the civil rights era – his 1965 recording with the Impressions was a key moment in the rise of social consciousness in soul music. "Angel" is a soul ballad recorded by American singer Aretha Franklin. Aretha Franklin covered Joy to the World, Are You Sure, Today I Sing the Blues, Over the Rainbow and other songs. “She was off the sauce and on the one.”The intense, atmosphere-establishing old-school gospel classic that kicks off “Respect” is a tough act to follow. The majority of the songs on Franklin’s first Atlantic album were either selected by Franklin and her then-husband Ted White, or written by Franklin herself. Beyoncé considers Franklin’s voice “one of God’s blessings.” Franklin’s powerful instrument can be heard across a recording career that spans nearly 60 years. Where Charles plumbed its soulful miseries, Franklin – who recorded it the same days as “Respect” and “A Change Is Gonna Come” – gives it a pronounced gospel flavor, particularly when it sounds like she’s gasping for oxygen while screaming out the word ‘drownFranklin wasn’t initially sold on covering the Band’s instant classic. Franklin – struggling with her relationship with abusive husband Ted White and singing about “a dream that I thought was love” – inverted the pained lyrics with vocals that refused to be held down by loss. Best Aretha Franklin Songs.

Before the final hook, she throws caution to the wind and emits an interjection of “yeah!” that pushes “The Weight” into the red.Though written by Franklin, she gave full props for this gospel-rocking Top 10 hit’s success to Donny Hathaway. But with “Think,” the personal was political. “I have to admit that before I was introduced to Aretha Franklin – it’s very embarrassing to say this – I hadn’t really listened to any of her records,” Lennox confessed to the British music magazine Aretha Franklin’s and her then-husband Ted White co-wrote her fifth Gold single, the B-side opener to her classic The Franklin-composed title track of her 19th studio album starts out comfortably, quickly attains a steady soul-rock groove and then launches into a gospel rave-up right about the time most R&B singles would have put out the “closed” sign. But the second track on her 1967 Atlantic debut LP finds Aretha as wretchedly miserable as its predecessor is powerful and uplifting. The sessions were charged with super power: Backed by the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, with Duane Allman sitting in on guitar, she cut so many classics that “Pullin'” and “Try Matty’s” had to be shelved for her next album, This track tells the story of a house that’s no longer a home once it’s been emptied of the love that built it. Aretha Franklin originally did Are You Sure, Love Is the Only Thing, Maybe I'm a Fool, Today I Sing the Blues and other songs. “The first time I heard George was with Wham!, and I liked it then,” FranklinDionne Warwick’s original version of this Bacharach-David classic was barely eight months old and still on the radio when Franklin cut her cover – “a magic bit of luck,” according to Atlantic’s Jerry Wexler, who remembered in his autobiography, The lead single from Franklin’s mid-Eighties smash Franklin’s secular recording career began after she signed to Columbia Records via A&R legend John Hammond, turning down an offer from Motown, then just a fledgling local imprint. He felt that Nina Simone, who’d written the black pride anthem in 1969 with bandleader Weldon Irvine, had already nailed it. It was the rare Franklin cover that didn’t re-invent the song, but her vocal – shifting from raw need to purring satisfaction to towering strength – made it definitive. Six days later, she sat at the piano at the New York studios of Atlantic Records, pounding the piano and singing about freedom. He obviously knows what he’s doing! It peaked at Number Two in January of 1968, and a few months later when Franklin was in Atlantic’s New York studio she tried her hand at another Covay tune, “See Saw,” which Covay himself had made a Top Five R&B hit in 1965. Thirty-eight years after Franklin released her first Columbia single, she put the ascendant wave of neo-soul singers on notice and scored a Top 30 hit. Her version goosed the backbeat and highlighted a tight horn section that included King Curtis, David “Fathead” Newman and Pepper Adams. “Keith understood what I had learned years before,” said Jerry Wexler in Donny Hathaway’s ethereal electric piano introduces this heavenly pop track from The first hymn Aretha Franklin sang at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in January 1972 was a song from Marvin Gaye’s Franklin’s sole Number One single in the U.K. was the result of the then-freshly-solo George Michael’s drive to team up with his favorite soul singers. According to Clive Davis, Richards, the song’s producer, insisted Franklin play piano like she did on many of her Sixties sides. Hammond’s forte at the time was jazz, which showed on Stevie Wonder co-wrote, recorded and then shelved a version of this charmingly pushy love song in the mid Sixties. Pages in category "Songs written by Carolyn Franklin" The following 3 pages are in this category, out of 3 total.