Tag: Aretha Franklin

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Film Features Film/TV

Respect: Jennifer Hudson Channels the Queen of Soul

Jennifer Hudson stars as Aretha Franklin in the biopic Respect, a huge step up from her latest cinematic endeavor, Cats.

Aretha Franklin’s nickname is hidden in plain sight on her 1967 breakthrough hit “Respect.” Coming into the final chorus, her sisters Carolyn and Erma sing “Ree ree ree ree” to kick the song into the stratosphere.

As the new film biography of Aretha — excuse me, Ms. Franklin — establishes in its opening scene, “Ree” was the nickname her father C.L. Franklin gave her as a child. “Come on, Ree,” says Forest Whitaker as the Franklin patriarch. “They want to hear you sing.”

Ree, played by 10-year-old Skye Dakota Turner, belts out a song with a voice that one partygoer describes as “10, but going on 30.”

Musician biopics are always a hard lift. People want to know how their musical idols rose to greatness, but the life of a performing artist is, paradoxically, not terribly cinematic. Sports figures have the big game they won. Generals have triumphs in battle. Musicians and artists, on the other hand, practice in their bedrooms and spend long, boring hours in the recording studio and riding the bus on tour. Their influence seeps through the culture over the course of years. That’s why musician biopics tend to fall into predictable screenwriter shortcuts, which were skewered with pinpoint accuracy by the 2007 comedy Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

Forest Whitaker plays her father C.L. Franklin.

The other problem with portraying a once-in-a-century talent on-screen is that the actor who is portraying the artist is, by definition, not as talented as their subject. Jamie Foxx is one of the best actors of his generation, but he can’t sing like Ray Charles. This is less of a problem with Respect, as Ms. Franklin is portrayed as an adult by Jennifer Hudson, who has mad chops. Respect is a big step up from Hudson’s last film, Cats, about which the less said the better.

Seriously, don’t watch Cats.

But you should watch Respect if you’re a fan of Aretha Franklin, or just music in general. Franklin’s life story is more twisty than most musicians who have already gotten biopics. (I’m looking at you, The Doors.) She was born in Memphis, and her father was the pastor of the largest African-American Baptist church in Detroit. She grew up in a household where conversations were sung as often as they were spoken. But her mother Barbara (Audra McDonald) left C.L., who was a serial philanderer, and died young; afterward, Aretha refused to speak for months.

Meanwhile, young Aretha’s notoriety in the gospel music world brought the attention of pedophiles in the church, and she had two children before age 15. Her first husband Ted White (Marlon Wayans) was as abusive and controlling as her father. Respect portrays Franklin as a victim of the patriarchy, which brings the true meaning of the song into focus. Written as a playful, yet undeniably sexist, song about marriage by Otis Redding, Franklin turned it on its ear by gender-swapping the protagonist and created an enduring feminist anthem.

For the moment of the song’s creation, which producer Arif Mardin called the greatest studio session of his long career, director Liesl Tommy turned to Hustle & Flow as inspiration. Being a fly on the wall as inspiration strikes makes for compelling cinema, but the film as a whole is wildly uneven. Tommy is an acclaimed theater director who has worked in television, but this is her first feature film, and it shows. She knows how to handle actors: Hudson’s performance borders on brilliance, showing flashes of the traumatized preacher’s kid even as Franklin uses her boundless talent to reclaim her humanity. Whitaker brings out the complexity in C.L. Franklin, who was a confidant of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as being a not-great father. Mary J. Blige has a short but dynamite turn as blues singer Dinah Washington. Marc Maron nails the exasperated record executive Jerry Wexler, who finally gave Franklin the freedom she needed to create masterpieces. But, too often, Tommy turns to clunky scenes straight out of Walk Hard to advance the plot.

Hudson’s singing is as up to the Aretha challenge as anyone on the planet, especially toward the end when she returns to her gospel roots. But it’s significant that when Franklin sings “Respect” at Madison Square Garden, the performance is smooth and stagy. Even in 2021, the real Queen of Soul is too raw for the big screen.

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Film Features Film/TV

Two Queens

CREDIT: Amazing Grace LLC

The concert film is always a tightrope walk. For every thrilling crossing over like Stop Making Sense, there’s a ponderous failure like The Song Remains the Same.

April brings two concert films that are similar on the surface. Both of them feature black women whose gifts far exceeded their contemporaries, man or woman; black, white, or otherwise. Both are stitched together from two nights of performance, which enlist non-professional musicians playing unfamiliar styles. And in both cases, the artists are at a crossroads in their lives, and are both looking back and choosing how to reinvent themselves for the future. But the two films could not be more different in mood or execution.

Aretha Franklin, who was born in Memphis, grew up in the church. She learned her peerless chops performing as a teenager with her travelling preacher father, C.L. Franklin. In 1972, she was four years into an unprecedented eight-year run of winning Best Female R&B Performance Grammys, and was regularly churning out top 10 hits like “Respect” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” Instead of going back to the studio for another conventional soul record, the Queen of Soul holed up in the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church with Rev. James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir, led by a man with the unlikely name of Alexander Hamilton. Recorded before a live audience, Amazing Grace, is the best selling live gospel record of all time.

Amazing Grace LLC

Amazing Grace showcases Aretha Franklin’s amazing voice.

The sessions were filmed by director Sydney Pollack, and Warner Bros. intended to make a TV special out of the footage. But when editors tried to synch the recorded sound with the mountain of 16mm film canisters, the project ended up scrapped, and the reels moldered in the Warner vaults for decades. But thanks to software like Plural Eyes, synching wild sound has become much easier in the digital era. With the help of Spike Lee, director Alan Elliott finally cut together a version of Amazing Grace, only to have Franklin sue to keep the footage hidden. After her death, Franklin’s estate got a look at the film and agreed to release it in theaters on Easter weekend.

It’s easy to see why Franklin would have bad memories of the Amazing Grace sessions. The meta story the footage tells is of a film crew completely unprepared for the conditions they would face, and a director desperately trying to get a handle on things while music history unfolds around him. But what made the footage unusable for TV in 1972 makes it gold now. Franklin’s performance is celestial, but the grainy film and haphazard framing serve to ground her as a human being. We’re a fly on the wall as magic unspools in front of us, and it is absolutely mesmerizing.

In 2018, Beyoncé Knowles became the first black woman to headline the Coachella music festival. She had been scheduled to perform in 2017, but she had to cancel because of a high-risk pregnancy that ended with the successful birth of twins. In her first show after almost dying, the most consistent hitmaker of the 21st century and feminist icon to millions pulled out all the stops. She could have done a victory lap of hits with backing tracks, brought out Destiny’s Child for an encore, and everyone would have gone home happy. Instead, she assembled not just a big band, but an actual, literal marching band.

Homecoming shows Beyoncé headlining Coachella music festival.

Beyoncé may not be the first to reinterpret her music like this — David Byrne and St. Vincent have done it, too — but arranging “Crazy in Love” and “Formation” for drum line, tuba, and brass adds depth and complexity to the insidiously danceable beats. The set, which created a pyramid out of metal football bleachers, turns out to be key to the ingenious staging, which smoothly shuffled more than 200 dancers and musicians. The face she shows the Coachella crowd is perfection, but Beyoncé, who directed the film as well as all other aspects of the show, takes care to highlight the months of planning and rehearsals that led up to the big moments.

As a musical spectacle, Homecoming has few equals. As a film, it could have been a lot tighter. As a musician, watching the prep work that goes into a show like this is fascinating and inspiring, but those segments seemed timed to kill the live show’s momentum. Since Homecoming is on Netflix, you can fast forward past them to get to the good stuff. Nobody’s perfect. Not even Beyoncé. But she’s damn close.

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Music Music Blog

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2018 Inductees

Eddie Floyd


The Memphis Music Hall of Fame just announced this year’s inductees, who officially enter the ranks of honorees at the induction ceremony this November. The Hall of Fame, a nonprofit set up in 2012 and administered by the  Memphis Rock N’ Soul Museum, now celebrates the works of over seventy artists or groups, and shows no signs of lacking local talent for future recognition.

This year’s inductees are, as usual, giants in their respective genres. We pay tribute to them here with clips of them working their magic onstage. Towering over them all is the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, who died just last month. She will be paid a special tribute in November’s ceremony, as the Hall of Fame honors a legend who called Memphis her birthplace.

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2018 Inductees (2)

Another soul giant, Eddie Floyd, will also be inducted this year. The writer and hit performer behind “Knock on Wood” and many other Stax hits, Floyd’s songs were interpreted by nearly every Stax artist. Naturally, not a year has gone by without at least one artist from the label being inducted.

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2018 Inductees (3)


O’Landa Draper, the Grammy Award-winning gospel singer and director of the Associates Choir, was considered one of the top gospel artists of the 1990s. He too will join the ranks of honorees this year. Though not born in Memphis, Draper moved to Memphis at the age of 13 and attended Overton High School and the University of Memphis.

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2018 Inductees (4)

At today’s announcement event, there was some light-hearted discussion of whether Draper could be honored in the same program as fellow 2018 inductees, 8 Ball & MJG. They will be, we were assured, but the musical numbers won’t be juxtaposed. The rap duo are on a roll lately, ramping up their live appearances and continuing to drop new albums. (See our recent profile of them below).

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2018 Inductees (6)

In keeping with the Hall of Fame’s tradition of inducting groups as well as solo artists, the Box Tops were also added this year. With Big Star having been inducted in 2014, this makes for two groups associated with Alex Chilton getting the nod. Could he be recognized as a solo artist in his own right one day? In any case, the announcement also named checked original members Danny Smythe, Bill Cunningham, and Gary Talley, as well as 1968 additions Rick Allen and Thomas Boggs. The fabulous guitar in this video clip was not mentioned by name.

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2018 Inductees

Another group, arguably far more groundbreaking than the Box Tops, was also recognized: The Rock and Roll Trio, responsible for the groundbreaking “Train Kept A-Rollin'” and other rockabilly masterpieces. Driven by the savvy guitar attack of Paul Burlison, brothers and Memphis natives Dorsey and Johnny Burnette took the world by storm, once upon a time. Here they are from 1956.

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2018 Inductees (7)

And finally, another legend from the first days of Elvis, who most certainly has not left the building, is George Klein, the pioneering DJ and rock ‘n’ roll television host who was critical to giving regional bands exposure via his programming. He was also an early friend to the King, and had the honor of inducting Elvis into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He’ll be honored with the other performers above (for he, in his own way, was an artist as well) at the induction ceremony, scheduled for November 1st at the Cannon Center. Here’s George sharing a strange moment with the great Sam Phillips.

Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces 2018 Inductees (5)

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News News Blog

Fans Flock to Franklin’s Home

Memphians, tourists, and all-around fans of Aretha Franklin made a pilgrimage to the singer’s birthplace, leaving flowers, posters, tiaras, and written tributes on the home.

Franklin died on Thursday. She was 76.

She was born at 406 Lucy in South Memphis. Preservationists have been working to save the home for the past two years.

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News News Blog

Judge Gives Aretha Franklin House One More Month

Aretha Franklin’s home before Memphis Heritage volunteers boarded up windows.

The LeMoyne-Owen College Community Development Corporation (LOCCDC) has just over 30 days to make progress on its plan to salvage the blighted birthplace of Aretha Franklin. In court on Thursday morning, Shelby County Environmental Court Judge Larry Potter issued a stay on his order to demolish the home. 

Earlier this month, Potter put the home at 406 Lucy in South Memphis into a city receivership and ordered the home to be demolished. It was first declared a public nuisance in October 2012 due to its blighted state. The entire back half of the home was nearly destroyed by fire years ago, and one side of the roof over the porch was sagging. South Memphis Renewal CDC was appointed a receiver for the property about a year ago, and Jeffrey Higgs of the LOCCDC informed the Environmental Court at that time that his group would fund-raise and relocate the home elsewhere in Soulsville. But little physical progress had been made.

However, Memphis Heritage volunteers showed up a couple weeks ago to board up the home. Its owner, Vera House, had her son remove the partially collapsed back portion of the home last week. 

Because those steps had been taken to secure the home, Potter told Higgs that he could have 30 days to prove that his plan to save the home was actually underway. Higgs told Potter that both Mayors Jim Strickland and Mark Luttrell had stepped in to help put him in touch with Franklin, who he said may put some funding toward saving the home.

“Ms. Franklin has talked to me personally and expressed an interest in saving the home,” Higgs told Potter, after first admitting that he wasn’t comfortable discussing that deal in court.

Higgs later told Potter that Franklin had said she’d like to see the home, where she was born and lived until about age 2, salvaged and placed in a museum. Higgs also told the court that he’d had some interest from local business owners who would be willing contribute money to saving the home.

After looking at the most recent photographs of the home, Potter commended the efforts to board the home and demolish the back portion. But he instructed Higgs that he must remove debris from the property and cut the grass.

“Let’s let the country know we’re going to clean up Aretha Franklin’s house,” Potter said.

After court ended, Higgs said his next step will be approaching the partners who have expressed interest in saving the home to let them know it’s “time to put up or be quiet.”

House and her grandson Christopher Dean were present in court on Thursday morning. Afterward, Dean said he hoped Higgs would come through with his plan, but he said Potter “should have given him five days instead of 30,” adding that Higgs’ group had had plenty of time before now to make progress on the house. Dean said, should Higgs’ efforts fail, he and his family have a back-up plan for saving the home.

As for Potter, he admitted that his demolition order on the home earlier this month wasn’t “one of his golden moments,” but he said the house was in such bad shape for so long that he was left without a choice.

“The moral to this story is that you may work on a case for four years, but as soon as you order the house to be demolished, by golly, it goes national,” Potter said. “So maybe we should just order everything [blighted to be] torn down.”

Higgs must appear before the court to report on progress on August 11th.

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Preservation Advocates Discuss Ideas for Aretha Franklin House

Aretha Frankin’s birthplace at 406 Lucy

Preservationists have less than a week to come up with a solid plan to save Aretha Franklin’s blighted birthplace home in South Memphis or else Judge Larry Potter will have it demolished. That’s what Memphis Heritage Executive Director June West told a room of advocates for saving the home at a meeting at Howard Hall on Wednesday night.

“Unless someone comes forward with $1 million and wants to do [all the work to save it], then we need to come up with a collaborative plan now, and it needs to be a plan that’s achievable and financeable,” said West, noting that a “solid plan” for saving the house must be presented to Shelby County Environmental Court by Tuesday. The group will have to show up in court to discuss that plan next Thursday. Unless the judge gives the group more time, the home will be demolished.

Last week, the Environmental Court put the home into a city receivership and ordered the home to be demolished. It was first declared a public nuisance in October 2012 due to its blighted state. The entire back half of the home was nearly destroyed by fire years ago, and one side of the roof over the porch is sagging. South Memphis Renewal CDC was appointed a receiver for the property about a year ago, and Jeffrey Higgs of the LeMoyne-Owen College CDC informed the Environmental Court that his group would fund-raise and relocate the home. No physical progress has been made with that plan so far, so last week, a group of volunteers from Memphis Heritage worked to board up and stabilize the home.

Higgs attended the Memphis Heritage meeting on Wednesday, and he said he has a $15,000 commitment to help stabilize the property, but he said he wasn’t at liberty to discuss those details. West emphasized the need for “serious players” to step up and put money and an actionable plan together. After the meeting, she invited anyone who could get serious about saving the home to stay and help them come up with a plan to present to Potter on Tuesday.

Addressing Higgs, West said “We have a history here. And we’re down to the wire. We need better communication.” Higgs nodded his head in agreement. 

Earlier in the meeting, a group of about 20 or so Memphis Heritage volunteers, South Memphis residents, Soulsville stakeholders, and preservation enthusiasts threw out various ideas for what the house could be. They also debated whether or not the house should be moved from its current location at 406 Lucy.

“The most impact would come from seeing it stay as close to what it originally looked like,” said artist Jay Etkin, who advocated for revitalizing the home to its original state and using it as a birthplace museum similar to Elvis’ birthplace house in Tupelo, Mississippi.

Other ideas included a place to host music and arts lessons for kids, a Soulsville radio station, or a “musical playground” with an outdoor stage on the porch.

Many, including West and Higgs, advocated for having the house moved to another location in South Memphis, closer to the Stax Museum. The street where the house is located now is filled with blighted and boarded-up properties, many with waist-high weeds growing in the front yards.

“Part of the rationale for moving it is that it will be 10 to 20 years before there will be development over there. It will be a hard sell to get people to go over there [to visit the home] if the only thing over there is Aretha Franklin’s house,” Higgs said.

Shelby County Historical Commission member Grover Mosley was perhaps the loudest voice at the meeting advocating leaving the home where it is. He said he’d like to “see the whole neighborhood revitalized, period.”

At the end of the meeting, a young man, who walked in late, spoke up. He identified himself as Christopher Dean, the 2011 Booker T. Washington graduate whose introduction of President Barack Obama before his Memphis speech earned Dean an internship at the White House. Dean said he grew up in Franklin’s old house, which is currently owned by his grandmother Vera House.

“We’ve been trying to save that house for so long, so I want to say thank you to people here trying to save it,” Dean said.

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Memphis Heritage Stabilizes Aretha Franklin Home in “Guerilla Preservation” Action

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

A handful of Memphis Heritage members and preservation enthusiasts met at Aretha Franklin’s childhood home on Thursday morning to board up and secure as much of the unstable structure as possible. The home at 406 Lucy in South Memphis is facing potential demolition if a group doesn’t step in to save it soon.

June West, executive director of Memphis Heritage, called their action “guerilla preservation” since her group isn’t the one charged with saving the home. That task fell to the LeMoyne-Owen College CDC, but that group has failed to save the blighted home so far, although the CDC’s executive director Jeffrey Higgs told the Flyer they’ve been working behind the scenes.

Bianca Phillips

Memphis Heritage volunteers attempt to secure Aretha Franklin’s birthplace home.

Last week, the Shelby County Environmental Court put the home into a city receivership and ordered the home to be demolished. It was first declared a public nuisance in October 2012 due to its blighted state. The entire back half of the home was nearly destroyed by fire years ago, and one side of the roof over the porch is sagging. 

Mark Fleischer

The back portion of the home was mostly destroyed by fire years ago.

South Memphis Renewal CDC was appointed a receiver for the property about a year ago, and Jeffrey Higgs of the LeMoyne-Owen College CDC informed the Environmental Court that his group would fund-raise and relocate the home. Higgs said his group has been in talks with Franklin’s agent to make sure the soul diva is okay with them using her name and likeness in any future use of the home. He said they’ve been working to find partners to try and preserve the house. But it appears, if action isn’t taken to stabilize the home soon, the court is ready to abate what it considers a public nuisance.

Higgs and West have said there may still be time to save the home. West and a team of volunteers braved the summer heat Thursday morning to secure what parts of the home they could. West said they’ll get a price for a construction crew to come in and take the burned-out back half of the home off.

“I don’t think there will be a rush to judgment, and they’ll bring the dozers out tomorrow. But I do think this is a wakeup call to Jeffrey [Higgs]. The only reason we’re doing it is because I believe this is the only thing that will stay the demolition,” West said.

Higgs said his group fully supports Memphis Heritage’s action to board the property. 

“Everyone is working collectively. Everyone is trying to save this house,” Higgs said.

Although Higgs was charged with coming up with a plan to save the property, the home is still owned by its former resident Vera House. She lived there from the mid-80s until about a decade ago and raised her 12 children there. 

“Only thing that’s really still good is the front room, the room [Aretha] was born in, and maybe the next room part of the way. But it really needs to be rebuilt, if you ask me,” said House, who was there on Thursday as overseeing the Memphis Heritage volunteers as they worked.

West said the home would likely have to be moved in order to save it. It’s currently located on a street with as many boarded-up homes as livable ones, and many front yards have waist-high weeds.

“It has to be moved. There’s no way it can survive, even fixed up, where it is. There’s no way anyone is going to go there. As much as a preservationist doesn’t like to move something, I think it’s only hope is to get it over by Stax,” West said.

Although she has no say in the matter, West said she’d love to see the home moved to a lot near the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, where it could serve as a historical tribute to Memphis’ soul history, much like the old Memphis Slim house that was revitalized and turned into a music colloboratory a few years ago. Higgs’ group (along with Community LIFT) was behind the revitalization of the Memphis Slim House, and he says moving Franklin’s home closer to Stax has been his group’s plan all along.

West said Memphis Heritage will likely hold a public meeting about the next steps for the house next week. She said the group may also soon launch an ioby crowd-funding campaign to fund its renovation.