Tonight’s selections from Aretha Franklin’s 1970 album, Spirit in the Dark.
Professionally speaking, Aretha Franklin had nothing left to prove. She’d shaken off a slow start in the music business after squandering years of her prime singing schlocky jazz on Columbia Records for a producer who once said, with a straight face, “My vision for Aretha had nothing to do with rhythm and blues.” She’d cemented her legend with “Respect,” a minor Otis Redding track that she elevated to a social-justice masterpiece. She’d established her voice as one of the 20th Century’s most distinctive instruments, right up there with Louis Armstrong’s trumpet.
On a personal level, it was another story. She had sung two years prior at the funeral of her family friend Martin Luther King Jr., and his assassination had left her shaken. She had recently separated from her husband and manager, Ted White, a volatile svengali who’d transitioned into the music business after a stint as a pimp. And she was already carrying another man’s child—her fourth, having become pregnant the first time at age 12, just two years after her own mother dropped dead of a heart attack.
Through this trauma came Spirit, a cathartic 1970 testimonial documenting the fusion of house-wrecking gospel and gut-wrenching soul that made Aretha Franklin Aretha Franklin. It is not her most famous record. It is not her top-selling record. What it is is her truest record, the one that best captures her essential ache—the pain of a black woman clamoring for freedom from the domineering men who suffocated her childhood, manipulated her career, mangled her personal life, and more broadly speaking oppressed her race and robbed her dignity. It’s an assertion of personhood, a monument to resilience in the face of pain. As if to make all this explicit she closes the album with a cover of B.B. King’s “Why I Sing the Blues,” though when it finally arrives the song is redundant. If you’ve been listening, you already know why. — Pitchfork
Don't Play That Song
Spirit In The Dark found Franklin newly free of the complicated, chaotic – and, by some accounts, abusive – partnership with her first husband. “My relationship with Ted White was beyond repair,” she wrote in her 1999 autobiography, From These Roots. “We agreed to divorce.” Franklin’s matter-of-fact description of the relationship’s end belies Spirit In The Dark’s emotional truth. Franklin chose The Thrill Is Gone (From Yesterday’s Kiss), originally recorded by BB King, to express her break from that love’s demons. The looping, urgent repetition of the word “free” throughout is her most overt catharsis of the corrosive marriage. [...]
But the album isn’t simply an expression of the now. Part of Franklin’s concept for the record involved digging into her own history to examine how love and relationships change and evolve – or not. Most obviously, there’s Try Matty’s, which is ostensibly about “a hot soul-food hangout on Dexter in northwest Detroit. Some of the best ribs you’ve ever wrapped your lips around,” as she describes it. But the song also contains darker lines such as, “Try Matty’s, when you can’t go home.” As a young girl who first became pregnant at age 12, Franklin once described that moment when she realized her condition: “that particular time of the month didn’t come as usual. I started humming and sweating the outcome.” It’s not surprising to think that staying out, rather than facing her family, would have been an attractive option.
Her baby’s father was a boy she nicknamed Romeo, and she danced and skated with him in a local joint, the Arcadia. Franklin’s choice of cover versions on Spirit In The Dark reflects this time. “When I was a kid, I’d skated to Dinah Washington’s That’s All I Want From You at the Arcadia,” she recalled. “I loved that song. When I sang it on Spirit, my mind went back to those couples-only songs when Romeo of the rink and I would back-skate all hugged up.” Don’t Play That Song, the album’s opener, underlines the ongoing echoes of past music that rumble throughout the years. — Dig!
Spirit in the Dark
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Try Matty's
Something of an overlooked gem among the albums Aretha Franklin recorded during her creative peak, Spirit in the Dark is an album that is overshadowed by albums that are considerably lighter in tone. This gradual swing towards a more serious vibe was well timed, as Franklin had worked hard to establish herself as a commercial artist of significant standing, and now she was well placed to become an artist of no little gravitas. Effectively, this makes Spirit in the Dark her ‘mature’ album, as she takes stock of how far she had come since I Never Loved a Man The Way I Loved You, becoming Soul’s new benchmark for excellence.
While the commercial streak is not entirely obscured, it certainly plays a less significant element on Spirit in the Dark. Even the album cover is a little more downbeat, especially when you compare it to the bright and breezy shot on the cover of Aretha Now! The whole of Spirit in the Dark sounds like Franklin is determined to transition away from being a pop singer to something a little more permanent, with it’s return to a her gospel roots and Franklin’s exploration of the blues. Sure, she was already being referred to as the Queen of Soul, but Franklin was still relentlessly working towards becoming one of music’s undeniable icons.
Spirit in the Dark is an album that you would probably play in moments of quiet reflection, rather than to get a party started, but that’s more to do with it’s tendency towards a grainier tone. One of Franklin’s more heavyweight albums, Spirit in the Dark did not achieve enormous commercial success, instead taking a more scenic route towards being regarded as one of her finest work. Sometimes the slow-burn is more effective than the big impact, and Spirit in the Dark is a fine example of an album that takes its time to impress you. — Back Seat Mafia
Pullin'
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When the Battle Is Over
Aretha fans, relief has arrived. Spirit in the Dark has the soul (and spirit) of the Aretha Franklin we all know and love. The Queen has made a strong return to her gospel roots, and therein lies the success of this album. Cut after cut is underlined by her rolling, gospel piano on solid fills and funky solos. Aretha’s piano work on “The Thrill is Gone” typifies her unique gospel way of interpreting blues material. She delivers her message tersely and, incredibly, maintains the musical tension and aura of desperation which haunt the tune.
I don’t know what to say, what to single out, about the arrangements on this album. They possess a kind of soul freakishness in their constant flow of fresh ideas and subtle, stoney effects hidden under layers of innocent-sounding, hard-ass, rocking soul. The do-wah-bop-sha-bang girls (besides singing in shimmering harmony) pop up at weird moments to offer words of advice or warning when Aretha makes a particularly impassioned confession of love. Sort of a latter day Greek Chrous in their effect. Other remarkable feats of arrangement: steadily rising, ass-kicking climax on almost every tune, guided by the sure hand (foot?) of master musicians and producers. If the MGs were at their best under Otis Redding, these various bands sound best under Aretha. Yup, she pulled a good performance out of everyone on these sessions.
Aretha wrote five of the tunes on this album and all are strong compositions and excellent vehicles for her. The standouts, “Pullin” and “Spirit in the Dark” are masterpieces of composition and performance. Why “Don’t Play That Song” was chosen over either of them for the single release is beyond me. Only two tunes here have been hits previously (both by B. B. King). “The Thrill is Gone,” and “Why I Sing the Blues,” and both, if you believe it’s possible, are more chillingly done than the originals. — Rolling Stone (1970)
Why I Sing The Blues
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