{"id":128598,"date":"2018-08-17T07:30:21","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T11:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=128598"},"modified":"2018-08-17T19:01:27","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T23:01:27","slug":"lady-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/17\/lady-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"Lady Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the end, we\u2019re left with the music: those luminous gospel recordings she made as a young teenager, still under her father\u2019s wing; the halting, if promising, cocktail-blues recordings from the early sixties; those earth-shaking singles and albums she recorded for Atlantic between 1967 and 1973, when the world seemed to spin on her axis. The forays into disco and standards, the comebacks and movie cameos she wandered through in the last forty years, some off-kilter, some wonderful, were all completely beside the point. You get to part the Red Sea only once. Everything after is just \u2026 after.<\/p>\n

When she finally broke through, in 1967, she was a powerhouse and seemed unstoppable. She made salvation sexy and sexuality holy; she made the radio a bigger, wilder, more inclusive place, and she made the whole world dance to her radio.<\/p>\n

And it wasn\u2019t just her voice. Her keyboard playing was formidable, and the piano intros to \u201cI Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t Play That Song\u201d take the history of popular music and shake it by the scruff of the neck before turning it loose.<\/p>\n

As a musician friend told me the morning her death was announced, \u201cHer playing is thirty percent jazz, fifty percent gospel, and seventy-five percent just plain Aretha. And if those numbers don\u2019t add up, that\u2019s just the way it goes. Aretha was bigger than math.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

I called another friend who played alto saxophone with her in the early eighties, when he was just starting out. He said:<\/p>\n

I was invisible. She had a really mean black rhythm section, guys that were rude, not personally but musically. And then she had a few kids she picked up along the way. And she didn\u2019t pay us much notice, so we could take in everything.<\/p>\n

We were playing these big venues, and she\u2019d be backstage with a whole entourage, all these kids, her own kids, along with nieces and nephews and cousins, most of them dressed up in Sunday clothes, shined and pressed. But it always happened: they\u2019d start acting out and running wild, and Aretha would just start singing to them and whooping and hollering, dancing all around with them with all the force of her voice and her spirit and her whole personality. I thought, Man, she\u2019s bringing the whole performance with her backstage! And then I realized it was the other way around. When she went onstage, she just brought her whole life along with her. There was no divide. That\u2019s who she was. It was all there, nothing held back.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Brian Cullman is a writer and musician living in New York City.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  In the end, we\u2019re left with the music: those luminous gospel recordings she made as a young teenager, still under her father\u2019s wing; the halting, if promising, cocktail-blues recordings from the early sixties; those earth-shaking singles and albums she recorded for Atlantic between 1967 and 1973, when the world seemed to spin on her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[35077,35087,6234,35089,35088,35084,35086,35085,7484,14028],"class_list":["post-128598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam","tag-aretha-franklin","tag-berry-gordy","tag-billie-holiday","tag-columbia-records","tag-john-hammond","tag-mahalia-jackson","tag-rca-victor","tag-rev-c-l-franklin","tag-sam-cooke","tag-sarah-vaughan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLady Soul<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Aretha Franklin made salvation sexy and sexuality holy.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/17\/lady-soul\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lady Soul by Brian Cullman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 17, 2018 \u2013   In the end, we\u2019re left with the music: those luminous gospel recordings she made as a young teenager, still under her father\u2019s wing; the halting,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/17\/lady-soul\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-08-17T11:30:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-08-17T23:01:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/aretha-franklin-death-ftr.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1240\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"775\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Brian Cullman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Brian Cullman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/17\/lady-soul\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/17\/lady-soul\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Brian Cullman\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4b261c683085c3fb22604e3319ae40e3\"},\"headline\":\"Lady Soul\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-08-17T11:30:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-08-17T23:01:27+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/17\/lady-soul\/\"},\"wordCount\":454,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/17\/lady-soul\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/aretha-franklin-death-ftr-1024x640.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Aretha Franklin\",\"Berry Gordy\",\"Billie HOliday\",\"Columbia Records\",\"John Hammond\",\"Mahalia Jackson\",\"RCA Victor\",\"Rev C.L. 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