The queen of vocalists, according to Bonnie Raitt: “There’s never been anybody better”
In rock and roll, there’s no set right or wrong when it comes to singing. For all of the great music that he has written over the years and the accolades that he has received for his performances, it would be difficult for anyone to explain why Bob Dylan is considered an incredible singer. It’s all about how the performer can translate their emotions. Gospel typifies that search for exultancy more than any other genre and Bonnie Raitt knew that everything about a great singer could be found in Aretha Franklin.
Although rock and roll was an offshoot of the blues, soul music wasn’t far behind. Whereas Chuck Berry was the one paving the way for what the genre would sound like going forward, one could argue that a song like Ray Charles’s ‘What’d I Say’ had the same cultural impact on soul music as ‘Johnny B Goode’ had on rock.
While Charles was still one of the undisputed kings of the genre, Franklin was first getting her bearings when singing in church. After all, most great soul music has a spiritual angle, and whenever Franklin opened her mouth to sing, she filled up a room and kept everyone glued to her performance every time.
And it’s not like she was looking to sing cute love songs for the rest of her career, either. That was for the starlets of the world, and Franklin demanded she be given the same decency as any man when singing Otis Redding’s ‘Respect’. While Redding jokingly admitted that Franklin stole that song from him until his dying day, no one else could compete with how she made it her own, ending up putting a more percussive spin and boatloads of attitude to the final track.
Raitt may have still been mining the same blues tropes that she had worked on for years, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see why Franklin was so revered, telling Red Bulletin, “Of all the people that influenced me – blues, folk, pop – Aretha is the queen for me. Her phrasing, her soul, her passion, her ache: there’s never been anybody better. ‘I Never Loved A Man’ is the greatest performance I’ve ever heard. Aretha is the queen.”
Whereas the first part of her career showed Franklin leaving a huge line of people in her wake on tracks like ‘Chain of Fools’, ‘I Never Loved a Man’ is one of the purest songs she had ever sung. Much like ‘You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman’, there’s a certain vulnerability that is normally reserved for the more lighthearted singers, but Franklin proved that she could do both in equal measure.
That vulnerability seemed to bleed over into Raitt’s generation as well. Whereas she was more comfortable playing guitar and singing the occasional blues tune, her version of ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ probably came from her figuring out the key to inhabiting that same kind of emotional honesty that Franklin did so well.
It’s not like Franklin’s power has dulled through the years, either. When looking at everyone from Tina Turner all the way to today’s singers like Ariana Grande, Franklin helped pave the way for someone with that kind of booming voice to dominate the musical landscape. Others may have tried to claim themselves as one of the queens of pop music, but the crown is far too heavy for anyone to take it away from her.
