A revelation, so to speak

Imagine you're a Negro living in Detroit in the Fifties. Life is not easy and your religion is a source of deep comfort. You go to church every Sunday where the well-respected reverend delivers his sermons about suffering and redemption. Afterwards he brings out his daughter, a shy pretty teenaged girl, to sing a few spirituals - the kind of songs that your grandmother, perhaps old enough to have been born a slave, used to hum to herself in the kitchen when she made Thanksgiving dinner. The reverend's daughter, not knowing she will someday become a musical legend, steps up to the microphone and communes with the Spirit as the organ and the choir murmur quietly in the background. Then she opens her mouth and a sound more thrilling than anything you have ever heard in your life fills the consecrated space around you to bursting. She sings, "Precious Lord... " - the last syllable extended, throbbing with emotion, majestic and beautiful, and the people around you shout and cry from sheer catharsis. God, the True Musician, has spoken to you through one of his most splendid instruments - Miss Aretha Franklin, the soon-to-be-crowned Queen of Soul.

Give me a little respect, indeed.

Great Singing, Atrocious Sound

No one in his/her right mind would deny the power and charisma exuding from the Queen of Soul's renditions of classic Gospel standards here. Her preformance is magnificent. The problem lies in the quality of the recording. It sounds like something produced in the Edison era. MCI could have at least attempted to do some remastering here. No such luck. I strongly advise listening to samples before deciding to make the purchase. I'd further suggest that if you want to both feel and "hear" the power, spend your money on some of her other Gospel recordings. "One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism" is excellent in every respect. Her "Amazing Grace" is another "can't miss" pick. The same recording shortfalls beset "Aretha Gospel," and that CD actually includes some of the tracks heard here. Again, the songs are rendered marvellously, but the recording equipment they used in the churches was about what one would hear from a Sony pocket recorder bootleg.



BEK