10. Aretha FranklinAmazing Grace
I’m gonna put Aretha Franklin in there; Amazing Grace, the gospel album. She was on Columbia and moved to Atlantic Records and that’s when she started having hits. They got her started writing great records, having hits, and then she went back to her roots on this album. Her father was a very famous preacher. Do you know about the Gospel Highway? Back in those days, the 1940s and 50s, if you were black music you got on the Gospel Highway, going from church to church to church singing. And this was a way that a lot of artists broke, and that’s what Aretha was raised on. She was raised in a church. She had her babies from a very early age because she loved sex. That woman loved fucking and she went through a lot of experiences but she was actually a middle class girl. But in 1972 she went back and did a gospel concert after becoming a huge star. She went back into it into her father’s church and recorded a live album and oh my God, it’s phenomenal. It’s my favourite Aretha album. This happened when her voice was in peak fucking position and she meant every word in her interpretation of these songs. I’m not very religious but I like me some gospel singing. If you’re a singer, the voices are phenomenal. And she’s got some amazing players with her and a lot of those guys became huge stars in their own right. I mean, you’ve gotta put the religion thing aside and just listen to it for the musicianship. Man, I could never sing like that.
