Tune Tuesday

The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin was born on this day in 1942. She was a musical force! Rolling Stone magazine named her “the greatest singer of all time” twice.

Her songs are soul staples. The list of hits is a long one that includes “Chain of Fools,” “The House That Jack Built,” “Until You Come Back to Me,” and “Think.” I could have chosen any one of those songs, but someone would call me out for not picking her best known hit – Respect. So that’s our tune for today.

Otis Redding wrote Respect and originally recorded it in 1965, with his version hitting #35 in the US. It was Aretha’s idea to cover this song. She came up with the arrangement, added the “sock it to me” lines, and played piano on the track. After Redding heard Aretha’s rendition for the first time, he said: “This girl has taken that song from me. Ain’t no longer my song. From now on, it belongs to her.”

“Sock it to me,” became a catch phrase on the TV show Laugh In. This line is often heard as a sexual reference, but Aretha denies this. “There was nothing sexual about that,” she told Rolling Stone in 2014.

The “ree, ree, ree, ree…” refrain is a nod to Franklin’s nickname, Ree (as in A-Ree-tha). In the second verse, Franklin proclaims to her man that she is about to give him all her money, and that all she’s asking is for him to give her “her propers,” when he gets home. This term would evolve into “props,” commonly used in hip-hop in the context of proper respect.

Songfacts.com says: Sax player Charlie Chalmers played in the horn section alongside King Curtis and Willie Bridges. Chalmers intended to take on the famous solo until Curtis started wailing away. He explained to Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer in 2011: “When the horn solo came up, which I was ready to play because I’d been playing it on the other takes, Curtis jumped in there and took that solo, man. He was so good. Even though he pushed me out of the way… it was the right thing to do.”

In 2017, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra rearranged the track just a tad and gave it a new, yet familiar sound that does not take away from the original.

The thing I love about Aretha is she can perform a song 40 times and each time it will have a unique sound. An example is how she performed the song in the movie Blues Brothers 2000. It still holds the basic framework of the original, but it is just different enough to make it sound phenomenal.

Happy Heavenly birthday to Aretha Franklin!