'Ree Spectacular

It's Sunday. Off to church, then.

For today is the 76th anniversary on Earth of perhaps the most beloved and classic vocalist ever to emerge from the world of the devotional to take over the world of the secular.

Example: if you ever watch those American Idol/The Voice-type shows, where the singers always turn the last syllable of a line into a 33-syllable testimony, swooping and soaring through ten million grace notes? Her.

She's pointing at you there, making sure you remember who invented this whole modern style of emotive, enraptured singing that you've seen and heard all around you for decades.

Strangely, I remember watching her dad -- evangelist Rev. C.L. Franklin -- when he had his program on Sunday mornings such as this as a child. I despise religion since age 7, but it always did have the deepest musical segments.

It was from the environment of her father's church that she emerged, armed with the music of Sunday morning and the sentiments of Saturday night, in the mid-1960s to reduce the popular musical world to rubble.

Now, 50 years on, she is still doing it, but having health problems. These forced her to cancel all her 2018 dates. Word is she may not be in that great of shape.

So we are here this lovely Sunday morn with a Happy Birthday, get-well-immediately-if-not-sooner tribute to the singular force that has been, is and will always be Aretha Franklin.

Aretha Franklin

two FM broadcasts, 1970+1982

i.

Festival de Jazz d'Antibes

Juan-les-Pins, France

7.21.1970

01 (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

02 Respect

03 (You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman

04 I Say a Little Prayer

05 Eleanor Rigby

06 (Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You've Been Gone

07 Tighten Up

08 Put On a Happy Face

09 A Brand New Me

10 Doctor Feelgood

11 You Send Me

12 Spirit In the Dark

Total time: 52:15

Aretha Franklin - piano, vocals

Donald Towns, John Wilson, Charles Horse & Clay Robinson - trumpets

Chancey Outcalt & René Pitts - trombones

Louis Barnett, Miller Brisker, Donald Walden & Charlie Gabriel - saxophones

Truman Thomas - organ

Ted Sheely - piano

Leslie Harvey - guitar

Melvin Jackson - bass

Hindel Butts - drums

Evelyn Green, Almeta Latimer & Wyline Ivy - vocals

digital capture of a 2017 France Musique rebroadcast

287 MB FLAC

ii.

Jamaica World Music Festival

Bob Marley Performing Arts Center

Montego Bay, Jamaica

11.26.1982

01 introduction

02 Hold On, I'm Coming

03 Love Me Forever

04 It's Your Thing

05 Make It Up to You

06 Daydreaming

07 Rock Steady

08 Say a Little Prayer

09 Respect

10 I Hurt Myself (I'm Guilty)

11 Ain't No Way

12 Because of You

13 Jump to It

Total time: 59:57

Aretha Franklin - vocals & piano

The Aretha Franklin Orchestra, conducted by H.B. Barnum and featuring Tommy McCook, horns

Sandra Dance, Estelle Brown, Margaret Branch & Cousin Brenda - vocals

FM cassette master, transferred & remastered by the legendary Charlie Miller

352 MB FLAC

both shows are in the same folder/March 2018 archive link

These two smokin' sets are from 12 years apart... the first dates from the beginning of the Seventies and the second from the start of the Eighties. Both are amazing FM captures and the latter one is transferred and remastered by taper legend Charlie Miller.

I'm not sure of the band for the 1982 set, but it does sound like Marcus Miller is on bass, and not hesitating to thump a thumb-crater in the Jamaican night, either.

I shall return on Wednesday next with some lush and vintage Jazziness for your auditory stimulation, but for now it's the 76th birthday of Aretha Franklin, and this is my way of saying Thank You 'Ree <3--J.