A week after she stole the Grammy Awards show, the bouquets were still arriving at Aretha Franklin's house.
The Queen of Soul sang the Unknown Prince's signature number in Pavarotti's key (three steps lower than her
own) with a 72-piece orchestra after a mere eight minutes of preparation backstage. Just another triumph for
a diva who has sung for presidents, kings and queens, won more Grammys (15) than any other woman and
was the first female admitted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
After a lifetime of transcendent moments, she still love(s) to do it. I had a great time singing it." Apparently,
much of the audience - including 25.1 million TV viewers in the USA alone - had a great time hearing it.
The reaction has just been overwhelming, says Franklin, 55, in a phone interview from home. I've gotten
the most beautiful, exotic floral arrangements. Eddie Murphy sent me several dozen pink roses. The house is
lined with big, beautiful arrangements from one end to the other. I just can't stand it.
Pavarotti just called her at home. They had a lovely conversation about doing the aria as a duet in June at a
charity benefit in his home city of Modena, Italy.
With the first note of A Rose Is Still a Rose,
Aretha Franklin serves notice that her 30-year reign as Queen of Soul isn't about
to end.
In fact, the Lauryn Hill title track from her first studio album seven years proves her vocal prowess
remains as remarkable as ever. Franklin has enlisted a slew of hot producers for this
album, and they've updated her sound without diluting its essence. Sean Puffy
Combs, whose presence is usually readily evident in songs he produces, smartly
gives her a simmering groove on Never Leave You Again, then steps back to let her
do the rest.
What always has separated her from other big-voice belters and lilting divas is her
knack for packing an emotional wallop in every word and affectation. When she
sings in Rose about moving on after a breakup, it's with a sense of strength,
purpose and dignity.
That same sense lifts songs like Daryl Simmons' In Case You Forgot, in which she
reminds a lover of what he'll lose if he leaves, and Narada Michael Walden's How
Many Times, where she demands better treatment and ends with a pointed you're
wrong, and you know it.
And in an era when crass sexual lyrics are all too prevalent, Franklin lays down
ground rules on In the Morning, singing I don't want to be the other woman. I want
us to matter and mean something.
At the same time, she shows she can still have a little fun, rocking steady with the
sassy Watch My Back.
The soulful seven-minute-plus album closer, The Woman - written and produced
by Franklin - is punctuated by her scatting through an extended jazzy vamp.
After all this time, this rose remains in full
bloom.
By Steve Jones, USA TODAY
After she got back home, Arista chief Clive Davis called to say that her album's title single - penned and
produced by Lauryn Hill of the Fugees - made its debut at No. 10 on Billboard's R&B chart and No. 43 on
the pop chart.
"I was in the kitchen when he called," she laughs. "What I sang at the Grammys was nothing compared to the
high note I hit when he told me where my song was coming in."
The hip-hop flavored Rose urges a young woman to keep her head up after her man leaves her. The song's a
'90s anthem from a singer who has been preaching strength in the face of heartbreak for decades.
"I think what Lauryn was trying to say was regardless of what kind of relationship you had . . . you are still a
flower. You are still fabulous."
Still in bloom
The same could be said for Franklin, who gave up smoking a few years back and whose force-of-nature
voice is as rich as ever. And she's winning over new generations of fans. VH1, BET and the youth-oriented
The Box all have the Rose video in heavy rotation. The album is already generating critical buzz, including a
four-star review from Rolling Stone.
"We are not hyping anything, says Davis, who says no one other than Barbra Streisand compares to
Franklin. We're letting the music speak for itself.
Yes, she is a living legend, but she is currently showing that she is relevant to youth. . . . It is not a question of nostalgia or appreciation for gifts from the past."
In a way, the past and the future are coming together this year for Franklin. Before heading to New York for
the Grammys two weeks ago, she sat down for lunch at the Golden Mushroom restaurant in Southfield,
Mich., and talked about how she'd be keeping busy in coming months.
She's writing her autobiography with David Ritz, who has done acclaimed books on B.B. King, Ray Charles
and Smokey Robinson. It's due out next year; she says she'll address many personal and painful things she has
talked about in the press. Painful or not, it has been good for her to look back.
"There've been a few tears, but all in all, I'm enjoying it, she says.I'll be dissing a little bit - and dishing a little
bit. I'm going to be deep-dish Aretha.
Franklin, twice-divorced with four sons, hopes to correct inaccuracies perpetuated over the years. One,
which she says got started in Time magazine 30 years ago, was that her mother, Barbara Franklin,
abandoned her family when Aretha was a child. Her parents did split in 1948, but she says the idea that her
mother, who died four years later, never had any contact with her children was blown out of proportion and
taken all out of context.
She'll also talk extensively about her father, a charismatic former pastor of Detroit's New Bethel Baptist
Church. The late Rev. C.L. Franklin was renowned as the Man with the Million Dollar Voice" for his
mesmerizing sermons and was a confidant of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As a teen-ager, Aretha often
sang gospel hymns at the civil rights leader's rallies.
When she was growing up, their home was frequented by well-known jazz, blues and gospel singers including
Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward. Her neighbors included such future Motown stars as Smokey Robinson
and Diana Ross; budding songwriter Berry Gordy used Franklin's sister Erma to demonstrate his songs.
A start in jazz
At 18, Franklin joined Columbia Records and made several critically praised jazz and pop albums. But "we
weren't selling any records." In 1966, she moved to Atlantic, where she topped the R&B charts 17 times and
had 36 R&B and 15 pop hits reach the top 10. She joined Arista in 1980 and has since topped the R&B
chart three more times with another 11 top 10 hits. Her Greatest Hits: 1980-1994 went platinum and had
the hit Willing to Forgive. She updated her signature Respect for the Blues Brothers 2000 soundtrack this
year, playing piano on record for the first time in years.
Now, she's planning documentary films on herself and her father, a bio-pic on the Rev. Jesse Jackson (a
longtime friend) and an unspecified fourth project over the next six years through her Crown Productions.
She'll release a gospel Christmas album on her Genesis label late this year from a concert at New Bethel in
1996 featuring herself, Bobby Jones and New Life, and Vanessa Bell Armstrong.
Her other focus is opening a chain of Aretha's Chicken and Waffles restaurants in the three casinos proposed
for downtown Detroit.
When Franklin's not taking care of business, she says,I'm very domestic I like to cook and do my own
cleaning," she says.
And she likes getting out her rod and reel.
I love to fish, bring it home, skin it, fry it and have a ball," she says. "We went up to Rondeau Bay in Canada
last year. The fish were small, but we had a good time. That is, until the mosquitoes ran us back into the car."
Her legendary fear of flying stems from a bad flight she had in 1982, not long after she moved back to Detroit
from Los Angeles to be with her ailing father. (He died in 1984.)
Since then, she has traveled by custom tour bus, which definitely has a bright side.I get to see America."
And she likes to just get off the bus and go into Wal-Mart and have a ball.
Still, she's taking desensitization classes that she hopes will help her fly again - something she'd probably have
to do to make it to Italy in June.
Pavarotti himself is more than willing to lend a hand with his private jet. After she sang for him at that
pre-Grammy benefit, the emotionally overwhelmed tenor rushed onto the stage as the audience threw flowers
at her feet.
You are scared of the plane, he told her. I'll come to pick you up.
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