1. Aretha FranklinSpirit In The Dark
I love Aretha to death but am particularly obsessed with the series of records she put out on Atlantic. I have a special affection for Spirit In The Dark, her most bluesy album, because it reminds me of the first time I went to New York, in 1995. One of the things I wanted to do with that trip was to buy every Aretha Franklin Atlantic Records album on vinyl. In my late teens I’d go to raves and was hearing a lot of house music, but I went to R&B nights, too, Gilles Peterson at Dingwalls and you’d hear Aretha’s Think there. That was my introduction. By 18, 19, I’d learned about Jerry Wexler and Arif Mardin turning her into a superstar at Atlantic. I got into I Never Loved A Man and Soul 69, then a little bit older I started piecing her story all together. That trip to New York was the last piece of the Aretha puzzle slotting into place. I spent most of my 20s in record shops, but those albums were really hard to find over here. If I wasn’t spending all my money on Vivienne Westwood clothes at the time, it’d be spent on books and records. The only one I couldn’t find in New York was Spirit In The Dark. I was walking down The Bowery on the last afternoon and came across a little junk shop with one box of records outside. It was full of tat, filthy and disgusting, but in this box was a copy of Spirit In The Dark for a dollar. I literally screamed the street down. It really is a beautiful record.
