FEATURE:
Beneath the Sleeve
Aretha Franklin – I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You
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AN album…
IN THIS PHOTO: Aretha Franklin in 1967
that I would advise everyone to own, Aretha Franklin’s I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You sounds perfect on vinyl. Released on 10th March, 1967, after nine unsuccessful Jazz standard albums, this album marked a commercial breakthrough for Franklin. Featuring tracks such as I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You), Respect and Do Right Woman, Do Right Man, it is one of the greatest albums ever. It was an album of independence and declaration from Aretha Franklin. Rolling Stone placed the album at thirteen in their list of the five-hundred best albums in 2023. I am going to go inside I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You for this feature. An album that needs to be in everyone’s collection. Far Out Magazine took us inside the making of this classic:
“By the mid-1960s, Franklin was beginning to find her footing. Emphasising her gospel roots, Franklin began to spearhead the nascent genre of soul, along with performers like James Brown and Otis Redding. But Columbia wasn’t evolving with her, and after nine albums with the label, Franklin opted to seek out a label that would work better for her more hard-edged sound. She decided to jump to the same label that had previously housed genre forerunners like Ray Charles and LaVern Baker, Atlantic Records.
The first order of business was to shed Franklin of the jazz standards of her past. Instead of the lighter orchestral pop that had been part of her previous sound, Franklin carefully chose her covers that allowed her a greater amount of personality and control. When it came to picking songs from other songwriters, Franklin similarly chose more pointed material. Although it wasn’t explicit, Franklin was crafting one of the first feminism-centred albums in pop music with I Never Loved a Man The Way I Love You.
It all starts with the album’s first track, Franklin’s take on the Otis Redding number ‘Respect’. Rather than embodying a figure who is fine with a philandering partner, Franklin flips the song on its head and demands to be treated as the only one in her man’s life. Franklin is in complete control, steadfast in her knowledge that she is the end-all, be-all that can be found in this particular union. Whether it was from transferring to a new label or the growing independence she felt from her husband, songwriter, and manager Ted White, Franklin exploded into an entirely new level of confidence on ‘Respect’.
Backing her up is the F.A.M.E. Studios Rhythm Section, later known as both the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and The Swampers. Although tracking originally began at F.A.M.E. Studios in Alabama, an altercation between White and studio owner Rick Hall resulted in production halting after only the album’s title track was recorded. Franklin decided that she still needed the white boys from Alabama to bring her newly emancipated sound to life, so she flew them out to New York, where sessions resumed at Atlantic’s in-house recording studio.
The secret to I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You lies in two more prominent features that had yet to be explored on Franklin’s previous albums: Franklin’s own signature piano playing and her insistence on using her sister Carolyn and Erma as her backing vocalists. Franklin played piano rhythmically and aggressively, a style that was followed by The Swampers behind her. Meanwhile, her hooks were accentuated by the preternatural blend that the Franklin sisters had.
The lesser songs on I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You are the most fascinating to revisit 55 years later. ‘Soul Serenade’ is a nod back to the jazz origins of Franklin’s style while adding a noticeable groove that had been missing up to that point. Drummers Gene Chrisman and Roger Hawkins developed a pocket that had never appeared on Franklin’s previous records, and it allowed her to dig into a song’s arrangement in more primal ways, belting vocals straight from the piano as she emanates heartbreak, love, frustration, and self-assuredness.
‘Don’t Let Me Lose This Train’ would be a jazz-lounge track if not for Franklin and her sisters’ soulful vocals. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You didn’t start as a major departure for Franklin from the jazz styles of her past, but thanks to the new band and new surroundings that she found herself in, soul began to replace jazz in a natural progression as Franklin became more comfortable finding her brassy voice. It would be her greatest asset, and it only took a decade to find it.
For the first time on her recordings, Franklin found herself at the forefront of the recording process. In previous works, Franklin had to contend with lush orchestrations, dense arrangements, and inflexible producers who believed they knew what was best to mould Franklin into a success. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You is one of the first feminist albums not just because of the words Franklin is singing, but because of the autonomy that she now had over her own music.
Tellingly, Franklin never loses the thread when she jumps from topic to topic. She can take on both ends of Sam Cooke’s discography, from his breezy party-rock track ‘Good Times’ to his impassioned call for racial equality ‘A Change is Gonna Come’, without contradicting herself. Instead, she embodies all sides of life, including the good and the bad in equal measure. Love is a difficult proposition on the album, as it was for Franklin in her real life, but it was never straightforward or twee like it was on Franklin’s previous records.
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You was more than just a change of pace for Aretha Franklin. It was an announcement that everything had changed, from her style to her sound to her image to her attitude. It was a seismic declaration of independence and self-actualisation, complete within 11 songs that had a new groove and rhythm that was leaps and bounds beyond anything that Franklin had done before. With Atlantic, she had a course set for the future that would allow her to indulge in soul and gospel, the synthesis of which would become her signature sound. But more importantly, she had found the sound within herself, a sound that was always there but was just waiting to find the right vehicle to come out. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You remains a treat for the ears, the brain, and the soul to this day, completely untouched by more than five decades of musical change. Few records are as timeless and consistently relevant, and that’s the way it will stay for the next five decades to come”.
CLASH illuminated a work of genius for this feature. They note how every note and thought on the album explodes with soulfulness. It is one of the deepest and most affecting albums ever. One that comes from Aretha Franklin’s heart. Almost sixty years after its release, it sound utterly unsurpassed and jaw-dropping:
“Despite only making it to number two in the charts and with total album sales of only 500,000 at the time, it put Aretha up there with the daddies of soul – Otis, Ray Charles, Al Green, Marvin Gaye. It was the album that helped Aretha find her voice and become a voice for thousands of other women. ‘Respect’, recorded on Valentine’s Day and opening the album with its uplifting and exciting piano introduction, became an anthem for women’s and racial rights, while the rest of the album offered strength, passion and guidance to others. Two days after its recording, Aretha Franklin Day was declared in Detroit.
No one can sing the blues like Aretha. Ray Charles’ ‘Drown In My Own Tears’, previously recorded by Dinah Washington, tugged so hard at the heartstrings, you could almost hear them snap. It is followed by some renditions of her contemporaries’ finest song writing, like Sam Cooke’s ‘Good Times’ and the political ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’. Her versions stand side by side with the originals, with some being more recognisable with the Aretha makeover.
Aretha also penned some of the classics herself, with the help of her then husband and manager Ted White or younger sister Carolyn Franklin, such as ‘Don’t Let Me Lose This Dream’, ‘Save Me’ and the tender ‘Baby, Baby, Baby’. She made new songs by some of the world’s greatest musicians and writers, such as ‘Soul Serenade’ by Luther Dixon and Curtis Ousley, the real name of sax god King Curtis, her own. ‘Dr Feelgood (Love Is a Serious Business)’, with its rolling Hammond and powerful bluesy brass, was also written by the Franklin/White collaboration and is seen as one of the best original numbers on the album, but it is one of a collection that most soul singers could only dream of. Among the many single hits there was also the album’s title track, which reached number nine in the billboard chat, and ‘Do Right Man – Do Right Woman’.
During the recordings at the Florence Alabama Music Emporium in Muscle Shoals, a drunken brawl meant sessions at the famous studios had to be put on hold. The album almost wasn’t finished, until Aretha and all the Muscle Shoals musicians reconvened in New York to complete the project. ‘I Never Loved a Man…’ is an album where Aretha – a young, black woman – is in control. Aretha played piano and directed the band, which helped create the strong, rich and sublime with its horn and rhythm sections. With the great King Curtis on tenor sax and her little sister on backing vocals, the whole package is one to be proud of and sets the scene for Aretha’s many successes in the years to come.
Despite releasing such greats as ‘Say A Little Prayer’ the following year, Aretha didn’t score another number one in the US until 1987 with ‘I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)’, with George Michael”.
I am going to end with some words from Rolling Stone. When ranking the best five-hundred albums of all time, they placed Aretha Franklin’s I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You at thirteen. For anyone who has not heard the album, then go and check it out. You really do need to own it on vinyl:
“The Queen Of Soul, Aretha Franklin had recorded 9 albums for Columbia Records within the space of 6 years. She struggled to find success on those records and so when her contract expired, Jerry Wexler convinced her to move over to Atlantic Records. Wexler wanted to use Franklin’s Gospel background to capitalise on the rising popularity of Soul Music. Franklin headed to FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama to record with the famous house band there. After recording the title track for this record on day one, her husband had an altercation with the studio manager, forcing her to move sessions to NYC. The song was released as a single ahead of the albumand went straight to #1 on the RnB chart, as well as #9 on the mainstream chart.
But it was the second single that would launch Franklin to stardom. Recorded on Valentine’s Day 1967, Franklin took a song that has been a moderate hit for its composer, Otis Redding, flipped the gender in the lyrics and in turn created arguably the greatest feminist and Civil Rights anthems of all-time. “R-E-S-P-E-C-T/Find out what it means to me.” The song would become her only solo mainstream #1 single and went on to sell over a million copies in The States alone. Her voice is incredible on this recording. She effortlessly works her way through the eleven tracks, hitting impossible notes without breaking a sweat. ‘Do Right Woman, Do Right Man’ incorporates a Country feel on the record, while ‘Dr. Feelgood (Love Is A Serious Business)’ is a through-and-through Gospel track. She ends the record with a perfect rendition of Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come.’ “It's been a long/A long time coming/But I know a change gonna come/Oh, yes it will.” Her conviction on this song is palpable. The US was at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, with seemingly no change in sight. It’s impossible to not feel the sense of urgency in Franklin’s urging of ‘A Change Is Gonna Come.’ It’s an anthem and one that is still relevant today in the Black Lives Matter Movement. The more things change, the more they stay the same, but here’s hoping that a change is gonna come soon. This record cemented Franklin as one of the greatest vocalists in history with na incredible performance from start to finish”.
I shall stop here. Undeniably one of the most significant albums ever released, I wanted to spend a bit of time with it for Beneath the Sleeve. Such a captivating and emotional listen, Aretha Franklin makes every song her own. Inhabits every word and syllable! I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You is…
A Soul masterpiece.