Publisher's Weekly Review
In 1999, Grammy-winner and composer Ritz teamed with Franklin to pen her memoir, Aretha: From These Roots. Here he candidly provides a chronicle of the Queen of Souls rapid climb to fame. Franklin was four when the family moved to Detroit where her famous father, the pastor C.L. Franklin, who became a national gospel and preaching star at New Bethel Baptist Church. Moving year by year through Franklins life, Ritz traces her journey from her days as a teenage mother with two children and her early marriage in her 20s to her first record deal at Columbia, her towering success at Atlantic (where she recorded Respect), and her efforts to reestablish herself in the disco era. In Ritzs admiring portrait, Franklin emerges as a woman who, though overwhelmed by fear and obsessed by control, is nevertheless the ultimate survivor, who continues to move forward with steely determination. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* With an outsize musical talent and a troubled family life, Franklin has worked to keep her painful history hidden and has poured everything into her singing. She was the gospel prodigy of the charismatic Baptist preacher C. L. Franklin; her mother separated from the family and died at an early age. Franklin started her career singing in the gospel circuit, one every bit as steeped in earthly temptations as any other genre, before moving into R & B. She was a legend and a young mother by her teens, eventually earning for herself the title of Queen of Soul, and she struggled to hold on to it through changes in popular music and challenges by younger singers. Despite tumultuous marriages, bouts with alcoholism and depression, and a reputation as a demanding diva, Franklin has maintained her stature on the strength of her talent and her support for civil rights. She has also been steadfast in protecting her image and her secrets, even in her biography, From These Roots (1999), ghostwritten by Ritz. Some 15 years later, this is his unauthorized attempt to get at the elusive Franklin, the one who so skillfully hid her pain in her music. Drawing on previous work and interviews with those close to Franklin, Ritz offers a portrait of a woman for whom faith and respect are essential.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
HOW OFTEN DO you remember the first time you heard a song? One evening in the late spring of 1967, I had dinner with friends at the old Shanghai Cafe under the elevated local tracks at Broadway and 125th Street. As we left the restaurant, we heard music coming from farther east on 125th. A record store had set up a turntable on the sidewalk, and was playing Aretha Franklin's "Respect" over and over again. A small crowd had gathered to listen. My friends and I knew something about R & B, and we were even familiar with Otis Redding's recording of the song. But we had never heard anything like this. That evening I didn't know that Aretha had been performing on the gospel circuit since the age of 12, and recording professionally on the Columbia label for six years, turning out well-executed versions of jazz, pop and blues standards, but never achieving a coherent album, or a hit. ("Respect" was the fruit of her new collaboration with Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records.) And I didn't know that the shy, sweet-looking 25-year-old singer was the mother of three sons, the first two born by the time she was 15. David Ritz, the author of "Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin," tells these stories and many more. Ritz has served as the ghostwriter or co-author of many autobiographies of people in the music industry, including Ray Charles, B.B. King, Etta James, Smokey Robinson, the Neville Brothers and Wexler - and those are just the first names on the list at the beginning of the book. (Ritz's collaboration with Ta vis Smiley, "Death of a King," about Martin Luther King's final year, was published earlier this fall.) Ritz also worked with Franklin on her 1999 autobiography, "Aretha: From These Roots." But he was disappointed in the book, which, he says, contains "enormous gaps and oversights" although it "remains an accurate view of Aretha's picture of herself." This time, Ritz was determined to write "the story as I see it." Though his subject didn't cooperate with him, he spoke at length with her cousin, niece and sister-in-law. From his years of work with other singers and musicians, he has amassed a huge amount of material about Franklin, and we hear from Ray Charles, the jazz singer Carmen McRae, Billy Preston, Luther Vandross and many, many others, including her sisters. He also spoke at length to Wexler and to Ruth Bowen, who for many years was Franklin's booking agent and sometime confidante. Ritz traces the trajectory of Franklin's career, shedding light on her taste in material, preparations for recording and collaboration with musicians and producers. He describes the making of all her albums and her dogged struggle to remain relevant and popular after that first run of hits ended in the mid-1970s. There were duds along the way, but thanks to her talent and indomitable ambition, Franklin was able to reinvent herself again and again. Ritz's reliance on his interviews sometimes leads to repetition, but he offers an abundance of information. Ritz also sheds light on Aretha's personal life - her relationships with her father, the famous minister (and King intimate) C.L. Franklin; her two sisters and two brothers (one of whom served as her manager for many years); her husbands and lovers. Although she was close to her sisters, both of whom were talented singers (and occasionally sang backup for her), she was also fiercely competitive with them, sometimes standing in the way of their careers. In Ritz's telling, she was hostile and unpleasant to many other women singers, from Roberta Flack to Natalie Cole to Whitney Houston (and Barbra Streisand too). She routinely fired bookers and producers and feuded with musicians. She was entirely lacking in self-awareness and, many of those close to her recall, was quick to turn pain into anger, fighting with family members about the care of her father when he spent five years in a coma after being shot during a robbery attempt in 1979, and about his funeral. Although she struggled with alcoholism, which she surmounted; compulsive eating; and an emotional fragility that probably resulted from her parents' separation when she was 6 and her mother's death several years later, she refused the professional treatment that might have helped her. Beginning in the 1980s, Franklin's fears - Ritz calls it her need for control - began to get the better of her. She was unable to fly, preferring to travel by bus (but not over the Rockies, and not during bad weather). Her inability to travel to Europe, or, for 20 years, the West Coast, curtailed her career. So did her longtime habit of failing to show up for recording sessions and canceling concerts, often at the fast minute and with no explanation. Many of the relatives and associates Ritz interviewed say that Aretha lived in a world of denial, refusing to confront unpleasant facts and inventing better ones. Ruth Bowen explains how, at Aretha's urging, she pitched stories to Jet magazine that put the best spin on the singer's life - either she had lost weight, or she looked better at size 13 than at size 8; a faltering marriage was perfect; Aretha was about to produce cooking videos, write a diet book, star in a movie or a musical, open a clothing store, start her own booking agency. Although it has been widely reported that she underwent cancer surgery in 2010, she disclaims the diagnosis. The Aretha Franklin who emerges from "Respect" is not someone you want to spend time with. Reading about how Franklin insisted on turning down Mavis Staples's voice so that it was barely audible in a recording of their gospel duets, I was reminded of Otis Redding's response to Aretha's version of "Respect." Ritz quotes Jerry Wexler's account: "He broke out into this wide smile, and said, 'The girl has taken that song from me. Ain't no longer my song. From now on, it belongs to her.'" Franklin does not display that kind of generosity. Does it matter? Stellar human qualities and even mental health are not requirements for producing great art, and Aretha Franklin is a great artist. Her voice still has enormous power and range. Before reading this book, I played a YouTube video of Aretha's performance of "Rolling in the Deep," a cover of Adele's hit from her most recent album, "Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics," released in October. My husband paused, riveted, in the doorway, as I had stood on the sidewalk on 125th Street all those years ago. "Who is that?" ELSA DIXLER is an editor at the Book Review.
Choice Review
Ritz has coauthored many music autobiographies, including Aretha Franklin's Aretha: From These Roots (1999), and he has now written a complete biography of Franklin, including in it many private details missing from the earlier book. Born in Detroit in 1942, the daughter of the legendary minister C. L. Franklin, Aretha Franklin began touring with her father on the gospel circuit when she was in her teens. She began recording for Columbia Records in 1961, but her career did not take off until she signed with Atlantic Records and released her first album in 1967. She soon became the major gospel, blues, and jazz performer she remains today. Drawing from numerous interviews and from published sources, Ritz explores Franklin's complex public and private lives. He also considers historical context, since along with her father Franklin was very involved with the civil rights movement. In that regard, this is a fine companion to Nick Salvatore's Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America & 2005). Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, general readers. --Ronald D. Cohen, emeritus, Indiana University Northwest
Kirkus Review
A biography of the "Queen of Soul" by the co-author of her memoir, From These Roots (1999). Grammy winner and prolific music writer Ritz (co-author, with Maceo Parker: 98% Funky Stuff, 2013, etc.) explains that this book came about because of Franklin's refusal to discuss any aspect of her life that contradicts the image she has of herself. To correct the distorted portrait in her previous book, he draws on the accounts of family members and business acquaintances such as her longtime manager, Ruth Bowen, and Jerry Wexler, who produced her Atlantic recordings in the 1960s and '70s. The story begins with her father, a charismatic preacher who took her and her sisters from their Detroit home on the gospel music circuit when their talent became evident. The influence of gospel and the black church remained an indelible part of Franklin's music. At 18, she signed a record deal with Columbia, then the biggest label in the business. However, the Columbia approach never managed to capture the power of her music, and her insistence that her records include something for everyone was a marketing nightmare. Also, her then-husband, a shady character one of her friends describes as "a gentleman pimp," controlled her career until she left Columbia for Atlantic and broke into the popular awareness as an unmatched performer. But great success did nothing to alleviate her deep insecurities. Ritz draws on the memories of Franklin's sisters and her brother, Bowen, Wexler and others who were close to her to document her struggleswith her weight, with alcohol, and with the up-and-down business end of her career. As the years progressed, her hits became fewer and farther between, and her fear of flying caused her to cancel appearances. At the same time, Ritz fully praises Franklin's abundant musical gifts and her work for causes she believes in, including civil rights. An honest and genuinely respectful portrait of a true diva by a writer who feels the power of her art. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Starred Review. That voice, that presence. Aretha Franklin (b. 1942) has been dazzling audiences and performing magic in recording studios for over half a century. Along the way, she has encountered heartbreak and happiness, achieved global success, and defined divadom all while continuing to surprise fans with her marvelous voice and stunning performances. Grammy winner and four-time winner of the Gleason Music Book Award Ritz (Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye) collaborated with Franklin on an earlier book, Aretha: From These Roots, but feeling that there was more to the story, he has revisited Franklin 15 years later "in an attempt to reinterpret and expand her interpretation." The finished product is commendable for its depth, much of which comes from interviews with key figures and family members, as well as Ritz's highly readable, captivating style. It's a compelling record of the life of a musical titan and a fascinating picture of the process of recording some of the seminal popular music of our time. VERDICT The king of cowriters provides the queen of soul with the definitive biography, along with a healthy dose of reverence, reflection and, above all, R.E.S.P.E.C.T. [See Prepub Alert, 6/2/14.] Bill Baars, Lake Oswego P.L., OR (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
