Brad Wheeler
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Published on Tuesday, Nov. 03, 2009 4:59PM EST Last updated on Friday, Nov. 06, 2009 2:56AM EST
‘What you want, baby I got it.” In 1967, Aretha Franklin spelled it out with a roundhouse opening-blow entrance to the song Respect , even before she literally said the letters on the sock-it-to-you chorus – “R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.” And the backups chirped, “just a little bit, just a little bit.”
Franklin arrives at Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall on Friday Nov. 6 as the long-reigning Queen of Soul, but her talent isn't limited to one genre – or even to her head-turning voice. She was gospel-trained and had a nice touch with pop too – listen to her sublime take on Burt Bacharach and Hal David's I Say a Little Prayer . Atlantic Records producer and executive Jerry Wexler thought the world of her piano playing, describing her style as a combination of Mildred Falls – Mahalia Jackson's accompanist – and Thelonious Monk. “In other words,” Wexler wrote in 2004, “Aretha brought a touch of jazz to her gospel piano.”
On the night before Franklin's version of Respect was released, the song's writer and original singer Otis Redding listened to a tape of it in Wexler's office. He said, “She done took my song,” and he was so right.
They want a little bit of her
Joss Stone
The fair-skinned English early bloomer sings like a natural soul-belting woman, but, like Franklin, never overworks the material.
Elton John
The early work of the former Reginald Kenneth Dwight bears gospel influence, but he's no pew-shaking Pentecostal – he learned at the church of the piano-playing Franklin.
Jennifer Hudson
When people talked a couple of years ago about a Franklin biopic, the singer-actress Hudson was getting the most votes when it came to playing the lead.
Dusty Springfield
The late Dusty Springfield was in awe of Franklin, the preacher's daughter who was offered Son of a Preacher Man first. Next-choice Springfield took it and ran – literally.
Mary J. Blige
“She's the reason why women want to sing,” Blige has said of Franklin. True that, true that.
From the next day on, Respect would be Franklin's signature. Her version was a rally-call anthem for both the causes of feminism and civil rights. It is, as well, an overtly sexual song: “All I want you to do for me,” the mezzo-soprano demanded, forcefully and not unreasonably, “Is give it to me when you get home.”
As for “what you want, baby I got it,” other singers do indeed want what Franklin has, namely her power-and-technique package. The list of vocalists she's influenced over the years is longer than the welfare lines of her Detroit hometown. When Rolling Stone voted her the greatest singer of all time in 2008, R&B star Mary J. Blige said it this way: “I look at her and think, ‘I need a piece of that. Whatever that is.'”
Yes, to have a piece of Aretha – just a little bit, just a little bit.
Aretha Franklin performs at 8 p.m. Friday at Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall.
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